Transfigured Hearts 30: Out of the Ashes
by MrsTater
Summary: Dumbledore is dead, but the most fitting tribute they can pay him is to allow their love to resurrect from the ashes of battle. There are so many pieces to pick up, scattered so far. But finding their way back together brings relief after a year of pain.
1. Part One

_This story follows **Then Face To Face **in the **Transfigured Hearts **series, and is set between chapters twenty-nine and thirty of Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince_. _Many thanks to **Godricgal **for her unflagging support, and for her incredibly thoughtful, thorough beta work. _

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**Part One**

He had walked these darkened halls alone so many times.

A quarter of an hour ago, he'd expected to be walking them with _her_, sorting out the mess he'd made of their relationship. Between the Hospital Wing and Gryffindor Tower, however, they had encountered Rufus Scrimgeour and his delegation. The Minister requested Tonks to accompany them to the Headmaster's -- Headmistress' now, Remus reminded himself -- office to fill him in on the sketchy details of the battle. Remus had seen Hermione, Neville, Ron, Ginny, and Luna to their dormitories, and now he made his way through the corridors to descend the great marble staircase.

Alone, the quiet drowned out the last lingering notes of phoenix song; the shadows quenched the hope Tonks had sparked inside of him. Bereavement wrapped around him like a heavy cloak, reminding him of the burden that the Order -- that _he _-- must bear now. Without the one who had always believed, always trusted, even when Remus had given him no reason to do either.

Without..._Dumbledore_.

The darkness was suffocating. Remus opened his palm and muttered the words to make the flame flicker to life in his curled hand. Its glow did not extend more than a few feet, but it was enough to allow him to breathe again. There was a clear path before him, albeit a short one.

It was enough to drive the Dementors of despair from his mind and allow him to vividly recall his first patrol of the Gryffindor Tower corridors as a prefect. How painfully conscious of the badge pinned to his robes he'd been -- he'd tried so hard for the first four years not to stand out among the students, and it terrified him to be suddenly singled out, and put into plain view of everyone. (Even being best mates with the most popular boys in school had not thrust Remus into the limelight; no one outshone Sirius Black.) Wouldn't people notice a prefect's monthly disappearances? At the very least, Lily surely would notice the pattern and suss the truth…

Reaching a landing, Remus stopped and peered down at the levels of stairs winding down below, sadness weighing heavily on his shoulders as he looked down at the destruction that had been caused just a few short hours ago.

Fear had not been his _only_ feeling upon being made prefect. Pride had burned warmly in his chest, as well. His mother's eyes had shone with tears when the owl delivered the badge, and cooked a celebratory dinner that rivalled one of Molly Weasley's meals; his father's face had not seemed so lined and grey and _guilty_.

Of course, as Sirius has pointed out, as he and James were always _in_ detention, and Peter would get bullied out of giving them, Remus was just the lesser of four evil prospects.

Which, for a Dark Creature, was still something.

Continuing his descent toward the ground floor, Remus' reflections turned more melancholy. His name would never go down in revised editions of _Hogwarts, A History _as a great prefect. Great prefects did not hide from the Headmaster that their mates were secretly studying dangerous, illegal magic; they did not disregard the guidelines that had been so carefully arranged to allow him, to attend school. No -- great prefects upheld the truth, and accepted the consequences. But prefect Remus Lupin had kept silent. For those few years, he was happy, and _liked_, and nothing else mattered.

Remus stopped again as he alit on the second floor landing, and peered for a moment down the shadowy corridor that led to the Defence Against the Dark Arts office. He considered having a look inside, to see if any trace of his tenure lingered in a legacy, but decided against it. If Barty Crouch, Jr. had truly played the role of Mad-Eye, he would have cleaned out the place in a fit of constant vigilance; Dolores Umbridge and Snape certainly would have made absolutely certain there was no evidence that a _werewolf_ had preceded them in the post.

It rankled.

But, as he turned to continue down the last flight of stairs, Remus could not deny that he'd not been the professor he should have. There should not have been nights of pacing the corridors, agonising over his betrayal of Dumbledore's trust. He'd known the position's curse, if not his own, made the post temporary. Why had he lied to keep it? Things might have turned out differently for Sirius, had the truth come out sooner.

Things might have turned out differently for_ him. _

As it was, the truth had come out too late, and without a word exchanged between Remus and Dumbledore on the matter.

If they _had_ spoken, would Remus have questioned why Dumbledore had sent him underground? Might Remus have seen himself as emissary, and not exile, as Dumbledore had intended?

_Would Tonks' heart have been spared?_

His own heart constricting, leaden in his chest, Remus leant heavily on the banister, head bowed, too-long hair falling in his face.

He was a fool. Such a fool to have doubted.

Dumbledore's actions -- his unwavering trust -- had spoken louder than any words.

As Tonks' had.

And her words. _A million times_.

A million times: _I don't care_.

She had shown him what he needed to know. Why had he placed such importance on words? No doubt Tonks would have told him what he needed to hear, if only she had known what.

If only he had told her what.

Or given her the chance to say it.

Clomping footfalls from the flight above echoed through the still castle. As they descended nearer, Remus knew without looking that it was Tonks. When she was nearing the landing just before the last set of steps, he turned.

Tonks stopped dead at the top of the stairs.

Remus' gaze locked with hers, acknowledging what he had come so close to admitting earlier (Merlin, it seemed an age ago that they'd walked to the school, and Bill, cheerful and handsome, had interrupted them), before the battle, and what his heart had always known, but his mind had been unable to accept till now: he and Tonks belonged together, were meant to be.

Fathomless black eyes were trained unblinkingly on him, reflecting the flame, regarding Remus with the same wisdom he'd seen in twinkling blue eyes behind half-moon spectacles.

_"I have the utmost confidence, Remus," _he heard Dumbledore's voice echo in his memory as he continued looking into Tonks' eyes, reading the same message in them, _"that you are more than adequate for this responsibility."_

Hope once again flared to life, stronger than it had in the hospital wing; more brilliant, more illuminating, than the magical flame he held in the palm of his hand; so warm that it melted the barriers of lonely isolation sent a surge of overwhelming responsibility searing through his very marrows and veins.

If ever he were to live up to Dumbledore's expectations, or even to prove himself merely adequate, it could only begin here.

With her.

With this witch, who never wavered in her belief or trust, even when he failed her utterly, to whom he was, incredible as it seemed, so perfectly suited to and suitable for...

Oh Merlin, how could he ever express to her how much she meant to him, and everything he was feeling?

"I love you," Remus blurted.

Tonks clutched at the banister, her feet shuffling to support her.

The inner fire burned more intensely, hotter and hotter with every second that Remus looked up into her eyes.

Here was Nymphadora, in the flesh, in the place he had always held her: above. But not on a pedestal, not out of reach; between them were stairs, steps leading up to her, and she was _here_, waiting for him to say the words that would bring them together, as they were meant to be.

Hand on the rail, Remus ascended -- one step. "You know I love you."

"It…" Tonks' voice cracked. She shook her head, and Remus could only imagine she was dispelling disbelief that he had finally, _really_ changed. "It was _never_ a question."

"That's why your Patronus became…"

Grasping the gilt handrail, Remus forced his eyes off of his fidgeting fingers and on to Tonks' face.

Her lips were parted; she was holding her breath.

So was Remus.

He released it with, "_Me_."

Tonks' posture was absolutely rigid, as if she'd been hit by a _Petrificus Totalis_ that rooted her to her floor. Remus realised that in order to reach her, he must ascend to her. There was no bringing her down, only him lifted up.

It had always been so.

How had he been so foolish as to believe anything else?

Remus mounted the second stair. "It changed because you knew I hadn't stopped, that I'll always love you."

Tonks remained so still -- face revealing nothing -- that Remus stopped again and hung his head. "Of all the things you need to hear from me right now, that is, ironically, the one thing you don't."

Through his eyelashes and fringe, Remus saw her boots step down. "I never get tired of hearing it," said Tonks. "I certainly didn't hear it enough this year."

Even as his heart constricted with a shock of guilt, Remus advanced up onto another step, meeting her eyes as she continued, "And if the alternative's our million and first argument about—"

One step below her now, but at equal height, Remus reached his hand out and pressed his fingertips to her lips. They were chapped.

"I do have close to a million things to say to you," Remus told her, "but none of them are arguments."

Tonks' eyes softened as she caught her breath. "You don't have to say them right now."

Remus wanted to say them right now, wanted to make everything right again. He tried think of what they were...

...but he found that he had only one, singular thought. The one he'd already given voice to. It insisted upon being voiced again.

"I love you," he repeated. "And I promise you, Nymphadora, I will make up for all the times I should have said it." He slid his fingers from her lips to her cheek and, quickly murmuring the words to put out the magical flame, brought his other hand up to cup her face in his palms. "A million times. I love you."

Her dark eyes glittered, and Remus just saw the haggard lines vanish before she leant forward, caught him tightly around the waist, and buried her face in shoulder. Remus returned her embrace.

Not an hour before, he had resisted the impulse to fall into her arms, and lean against her strong shoulder; now _he_ was the one doing the holding as she trembled against him. All year he'd kept away from this, feeling too weak to be what she needed. If only he'd known he would feel he solid and sure as he held her, as though made strong enough by the very act of trying to give what she sought -- if only he had not been too stubborn, too fearful to _try_.

Merlin, her body seemed so _small _in his arms. And yet she was everything to him in this moment.

_They made each other strong._

And _safe_ -- how else could her Patronus have taken his form?

She had always been such a silent crier that Remus could not be sure whether she was doing now, or if she was shaking because her muscles were strained with holding to him with all her strength. If she was crying, Remus, for the first time in a year did not feel like a monster for making her do. It was the embrace that would have been so very normal for them under normal circumstances, upon the end of battle and the realisation that they had both made it through.

Tonks was relieved.

Remus bent and nuzzled her cheek and her neck, while his fingers stroked her lank hair. He whispered that he loved her -- a million times were miles away, but little by little the tension she carried in her shoulders relaxed.

He was a comforter.

A protector.

_Patronus_.

How much time elapsed as they embraced, Remus had no idea. When Tonks drew back, smiling slightly, Remus exhaled deeply to see her eyes holding him so softly as her fingers traced patterns on his back. Yet there was something dazed, too, about the way she was looking at him, a little wide-eyed, as though she were trying to work out whether this were really happening.

She might not need him to say everything now, but he had to say _something_.

"I'm sorry," Remus said.

"I know that, too."

"I don't know how you can ever forgive me for the way I've--"

"You know that I have," Tonks gently interrupted, "and why I have. Because I…" She stopped. She pressed her lips together, looked steadily at him.

And waited.

In the silence, Remus searched her eyes. Why did she hesitate? Her hands squeezed him.

She was prodding him.

Understanding dawned. Tonks needed him to acknowledge what she'd been saying to him all year, a million times.

_She needed to hear the words_.

"Because you love me," said Remus with a shuddering breath, holding her more closely to him, very glad for her arms circling him. "After everything…I don't understand _why _or _how_."

"Do you need to understand?" Tonks asked, and Remus looked down and saw tiny lines furrowing the corners of her mouth and eyes as she frowned. "It's enough for me just to know I do."

_Did he need to understand?_ That had been the problem this year, had it not? Everything he'd thought he understood, he truly had not comprehended at all.

"I think…" He shook his head and tightened his embrace. "I _know_ it can be enough for me. I don't want to care about the whys and hows anymore."

Tears pooled at the corners of Tonks' eyes, then she tucked her head under his chin, cheek pressed to his chest. Her breath shuddered against his chest, and even through their layers of robes and clothes he could feel her heart pounding erratically against his. Instinctively, Remus kissed the top of her head; Tonks raised it again.

There was so much hope in her expression that Remus had to take her sweet, heart-shaped face in his hands again, and press his lips gently to her mouth.

The kiss was brief, and just as he pulled away, Tonks, as though she'd been waiting for him to give some indication that it was all right to do so, asked breathlessly, "Come back to the Hogshead with me? We can not care together."

Despite wanting to take her hand and run straight downstairs, out the doors, and down the road to where they could Apparate to the inn, Tonks' words, and the suggestion that he'd said enough on the matter, made Remus bristle.

Feeling it, Tonks looked up sharply.

"Our conversation cannot end there," Remus said. "I didn't mean to imply..." His mind felt sluggish. He took a moment to translate his jumble of thoughts into clear words, then said, "Not caring is not an option, for either of us, and we've got to talk things through if this...if we..."

Shoulders hunched, eyes narrowing in a guarded expression, Tonks tried to step back from him, but Remus caught her arms and held her in place. "I don't want to talk it through now. I want to stay with you."

"But if you--"

"I promise, I will not walk away from you again. Couples have to make these choices together, haven't they?"

As Tonks nodded, fearful defensiveness left her demeanour, though, relief did not wipe away the haggard lines. Her face seemed all cheekbones and dark hollows. Tonight's physical battle, and the year's emotional one, had ended -- but not without taking their toll.

She was exhausted.

Remus held out his arm to her, and she wrapped both of hers around it, leaning heavily against him.

Together, they walked the last darkened corridor, and stepped out into the night. The path was lit by a million stars, and in the horizon, the moon was on the wane.

_To be continued..._

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_**A/N: Well, here we are, at the beginning of the end. This piece looks to be five chapters, and I really hope it's a satisfying end to this long series. I really appreciate everyone who's taken the time to follow the series, and especially for all the lovely encouragement you've given me with each installment. **_

_**This time, reviewers will get to invite Remus to stay the night with you at the inn of your choice, where he promises to tell you a million times the thing you most want to hear...**_


	2. Part Two

**Part Two**

Remus Side-along Apparated Tonks to the Hog's Head tavern instead of directly to her room. Aberforth needed to be told about his brother, Remus thought, if he hadn't got word already; Tonks, not unsympathetically, argued that one of the Aurors stationed in Hogsmeade would have done.

She was right, they discovered, upon entering the pub and finding it vacant. The bleating of goats lured them out the back door, which stood ajar. Aberforth sat hunched against the side of the building, nursing a Firewhiskey, and holding audience with a bearded goat that was wearing a purple star-spangled wizard's hat.

Part of Remus wanted to laugh, because he could just see Dumbledore's bright blue eyes twinkling behind the lenses of his half-moon spectacles while a knowing smile twitching at the corners of his mouth. But Dumbledore was not here to be amused by this strange tribute. His blue eyes would never open again, his mouth never smile, his sage voice never quip. He was not just a fallen leader, but a lost brother, as well.

Aberforth's expression glazed over as he drank, and his long fingers stroked the goat's beard almost reverently. A swell of pity made Remus stand very close to Tonks. He was reduced to a platitude condolence for Aberforth's loss, which included an assurance that Dumbledore would be sorely missed by the entire Wizarding community.

"Not enou' ol' goats like Albus i'the world," Aberforth slurred, and turned away, hunkering down into his robes, the brim of his hat falling over his eyes.

A tug on his sleeve, and Remus looked down at Tonks, drawn to her glassy, purple-rimmed eyes, which shone from her pale face in the moonlight.

"Let's go to bed," she whispered.

Remus knew she meant go to bed and _sleep_, but he barely felt the pull of Tonks Apparating them to her room upstairs as he considered the implications of those words. To lie _in bed_ with her, to _hold her_…

Over the course of the past year, he had learnt to ignore that ache that always gnawed at him at night, during his darkest days underground, just as he had learnt to ignore the hunger pangs that gripped his belly. Now the increasingly more real thoughts that he had _not_ lost her, that he would be able to fall into her open arms and without guilt find his way back where he belonged -- back _home_ -- made something deep inside him go warm and light. A current of energy surged out from it, quickening his heart, strengthening his limbs, pricking his toes and fingertips.

_Her _fingers were working methodically at the buttons of her robes. Remus, senses so acute in the moment of desire, keenly aware of the bed dominating the small, shabby room, resisted the impulse to help her off with her clothes. Her uncharacteristically deliberate movements told of a struggle for control, an uncertainty about what was happening between them, a lack of trust in his earlier words.

Remus inhaled, deeply.

He exhaled, slowly.

Need subsided.

Head clear, he considered what Tonks must be thinking, as she stared at the bed: she had to be remembering the other time he'd come to her here after a tragedy -- Greyback's savage killing of the little Montgomery child -- desperate to feel alive, and _human_.

Remus had made no promises that night, and yet he'd managed to make Tonks believe they could be together.

_He'd used her._

Maybe not _technically_, since he had realised in time that going to bed with Tonks under those circumstances would not be an act of love. But there was no question that he had broken faith with her.

Regaining her trust, restoring their relationship, would take time.

The knowledge didn't change the fact that the woman Remus loved was, apparently, going to undress in front of him. The obvious solution for reining in his pesky desires was to turn away and go about his own business of getting ready for bed, but something held him back. He focused on a tear in her shoulder seam, and made a mental note to mend it for her later.

Tonks' robes fell suddenly to the floor, and she stepped over the crumpled garment en route to her bureau.

"Oh," said Remus as she drew out a pair of midnight blue pyjamas with a pattern of fluffy sheep jumping over picket fences. "I haven't anything to change into…"

Tonks reached into the drawer again and pulled out a lurid green bundle. Wordlessly, she unfurled a camisole with neon plaid bottoms. One of her dark eyebrows arched, and the corner of her mouth quirked upward.

"Molly's been trying to put meat on my bones," said Remus, "but I am afraid I never will have the shoulders for spaghetti straps."

Though he jumped slightly at her shriek of laughter, Remus' blood surged hotly through his body at the way her eyes lit up. His low chuckle mingling with her laugh, he reached out to brush the backs of his fingers across her faintly pink cheek.

At his touch, Tonks' laughter instantly died. Her smile lingered, however, and her eyes darkened with impenetrable depth. Clutching the pyjamas in the hand that hung at her side, her other small hand covered Remus'; he unbent his fingers as she pressed his palm to her face.

"That was such a Remus thing to say."

His breath hitched as he recalled Tonks' words from months before: that she could get through the business of war knowing she could come home to him, where he would hold her and say "Remus things."

She asked so little of him. So very little. It was difficult to believe it could be enough.

He wanted to believe it could be.

He had so little to offer her, but he could give her what she asked.

Perhaps he could give her more.

He traced her cheekbone with his thumb. She watched him unblinkingly, until he brushed his thumb over her full lower lip.

Her eyelids fluttered closed.

His heart beat wildly --

-- only to go absolutely still as her lips parted just enough that the tip of his thumb was momentarily cocooned in the light, moist warmth of her mouth.

He leant in toward her. She kept hold of his hand as his fingers moved down to her chin, tilting her face up to his. Both caught their breath as his lips slid onto her mouth where his thumb had been.

_Dear Merlin_. When had they last kissed like this? Her lips were so soft, so yielding, responding to him with the tenderness and care with which she always treated him. Yet there was a firmness to her kiss, too, which spoke to Remus of her forgiveness and her acceptance of him -- just as he was -- and her love; he tried, if such a thing was possible, to give back to her a measure of the hope she'd filled him with.

Abruptly, Tonks broke away. Her hand fell to her side as she stepped back. Her eyes had gone very wide, dazed looking, and just a little overwhelmed. Remus watched her kneel and fish her wand from the robes she'd shed, then she transfigured the garish pyjamas into a man's pair.

They were identical to his favourite set, pale blue, light cotton, which--

Standing, Tonks held out the pyjama bottoms to him, appearing perfectly calm now except for a trembling hand. The other clutched the shirt to her chest. _Keeping it for herself._ As she had done so endearingly last summer, the first night he'd stayed at her flat after Sirius died.

They had shared one pair of pyjamas between them.

It was such a simple gesture, yet conveyed such depth of meaning -- so much more than any words could in this moment. They _could_ go back, almost to where they'd left off. Things weren't the same between them; there was broken trust...But through her affectionate act, Tonks was giving Remus the chance to put right what he'd made wrong. The knowing glint in her eyes confirmed that she was consciously doing it; she, too, held that memory of shared pyjamas dearly.

Swallowing a lump that had lodged in his throat, Remus quickly unbuttoned his robes. He let them fall to the floor, then kicked them into a pile with Tonks'.

Smiling, Tonks peeled off her t-shirt, revealing a deep plum-coloured bra. Remus, touched by her total un-guardedness, began to unbutton his own shirt --

-- but the connection between his brain and his fingers was disrupted when she bent to unlace her boots and gave him a plain view of the hollow between her breasts. Her fair skin was like porcelain against that jewel-toned bra; kicking off her shoes, Tonks unzipped her jeans to reveal matching knickers that hugged the curves of her hips and bottom.

As she straightened to step out of her trousers, and caught him staring, Remus flushed. Tonks, however, looked pleased -- if a little surprised -- to catch him. Reminded again how Tonks' confidence in her appearance had faltered in light of her inability to morph, Remus kept his eyes fixed steadily on her as he undressed and folded his clothes on top of the bureau.

A strange magic energised the air in the room. The tingling sensation, the breathlessness, a stomach-dropping sensation, as felt when one swooped downward on a broom from a great height, reminded Remus of the way he had felt at various passionate moments with Tonks. But they had never been together quite like _this_.

In the brief time they'd shared her flat, they'd undressed in front of each other. Earlier than that in their relationship, articles of clothing had been removed during particularly heated encounters. The intimacy of both situations had stemmed naturally from knowing exactly where they stood with one another, out of a long engendered, carefully cultivated trust.

The process of reconciliation, however, seemed to be happening in reverse, as though the emotional could not be addressed until every layer -- including the physical layers -- was stripped away.

But…that didn't mean they should immediately leap into a physical relationship, did it?

Remus stepped slowly into the pyjama bottoms as he let his scrutinising gaze travel over Tonks' slender form. She was exhausted. She'd been the one to break their kiss, after just a moment. She couldn't--

He forgot to breathe.

Still holding him with her dark eyes, Tonks reached around behind to unclasp her bra.

Her breasts jiggled as she released them from the supporting garment --

-- and as she laughed, gleaming eyes darting downward.

Remus followed her gaze and flushed: he'd stepped both legs into one opening of the trousers.

"Fancy yourself a mermaid?" Tonks asked through her laughter.

"There are mer_men_!" Remus shot her a mock glare through his fringe. Returning his attention to the awkward task of drawing one leg out of the pyjama bottoms without losing his balance, he mustered as much dignity as was possible and said, "Anyway, it's hardly fair to ask a man to do anything properly when there's a perfect pair of breasts in his face."

"They weren't in your face!"

Tonks' laughter belied her, and Remus, the correct number of one limb per trouser leg now, looked up eagerly as he tightened the drawstring at the waist.

He was delighted to see that, once again, and if the soft flush on her cheeks was any indication, she looked pleased by the compliment he'd paid her -- but the perfect breasts were covered by the blue pyjama shirt she was buttoning.

"Come on," she said through a yawn, turning and striding toward the bathroom; at least he'd a pleasant view of her purple knickers. "I think I've got a spare toothbrush."

"Or I could conjure one," said Remus hoarsely, not moving to follow her, because he felt light-headed and wrong-footed.

The sound of a drawer sliding open, then of Tonks rifling through it, drifted out from the bathroom. "Nope," her voice echoed. "Got one." Her face, pixie-like despite her fatigue, appeared from around the doorframe. "Unless you've an aversion to glittery pink?"

Remus picked his way around her discarded clothes, eyes lingering on the bra, and crowded himself with her into the mouldy bathroom. He winced as the floor beneath his feet shifted from carpet to cold tile. His fingers brushed hers as he took the toothbrush from her.

"I am not, in the least, averse to pink. You know I adore it."

Tonks seemed to shrink a little as her gaze wandered from his, settling vacantly over his shoulder. "I wish I'd more pink than a toothbrush."

Remus marvelled at the absence of accusation from her voice, which, instead of making him feel guilty, heightened the sense of responsibility that had filled him during their confrontation on the Hogwarts stairs.

He smoothed her mussed hair, then dipped his head to kiss her temple before trailing his lips down along her cheekbone. "You will have."

She gave him a small, hopeful smile, and gave her head a curt nod of agreement.

They took turns at the sink to brush their teeth and wash their faces, falling easily into the routine they'd established in those days of living together, almost as if they had never been separated at all. Remus had forgotten how comforting and intimate he'd thought it to do something as mundane as brushing his teeth with her. This was what had made Sirius' death so much more bearable than James'. How would it have been to look forward to visits home with this civilised _normalcy_ during his stint underground?

Finishing in the bathroom, they put out the light and shuffled the few paces to the bed. As they turned down the covers together, gazes meeting furtively across the bed, Remus had a sensation of being a clueless schoolboy again. The air, thickening and crackling as though a powerful spell had been cast in the room, was stifling. What did Tonks expect when they slid beneath the sheets together? He recalled feeling a bit like this last summer at her flat. Then, Remus had decided to follow Tonks' lead. He supposed that must be the proper course of action now.

Though the bed was unmade, Tonks did not climb into it. She remained standing beside it, shoulders were hunched in a protective stance, and she chewed her lower lip.

"We don't have to share," said Remus, half-swallowing the words, shifting his weight. "I promise, Tonks, I will not give a repeat performance of...of how I treated you last March...I will not leave you again. But I understand, if you'd rather wait till we've talked about..."

Without looking up, Tonks said in low tones, "Every morning I woke up hoping you'd live through the day. And every night I went to bed not knowing if you had."

His concern over sleeping arrangements seemed trivial, indeed, as a few strides brought him around the bed to comfort Tonks in this much graver distress.

Slipping his arms around her waist, he rested his forehead against hers. "I'm alive tonight, Nymphadora. I'll be holding you when I fall asleep, and I'll be lying next to you when you awake."

Tonks tried to smile, but didn't quite.

Her eyes were much too old.

"I saw you almost die tonight," she said, shakily. "That killing curse—"

"—missed me," Remus finished for her, pressing his fingers to her lips.

He knew exactly how she felt. This was so like last year at St. Mungo's, when it was Tonks who'd had a brush of death. She'd asked him if he loved her, and he nearly hadn't told her, because it didn't seem fair. How could one make promises, when there were no guarantees? Tomorrow's aim might well be true.

_That was the risk of love, and what they were fighting for. _

Tomorrow's curse could aim for her --

-- but tonight he could sleep with her in his arms.

_He was sick of wasting time. _

It was probably one of the million things they needed to discuss, but now was not the time for words. Instead, Remus dropped another kiss onto Tonks' mouth. Sliding his hands down over her bottom, he cupped underneath to lift her onto the bed. Tonks scooted across to the opposite side of the mattress, and Remus pulled the duvet up over them as he slipped in beside her.

Immediately, Tonks snuggled up next against him, and Remus sighed deeply, every muscle in his body relaxing as her face burrowed in his chest; breath tickling his bare chest; warm, small fingers splayed on his back as she hugged his waist; legs tangled with his. He rested his hand on her thigh, stroking the smooth skin, occasionally allowing his fingers to drift up and touch the satiny fabric of her purple knickers, as he had done the last time they were together like this, sharing a pair of pyjamas, and she'd curled herself so comfortably against him.

It was exactly what he needed, after the events of tonight...of this entire year: to come home to her, to hold her, to hear her say Tonks things.

As her felt her heart gradually slow, and her breathing deep, he _believed_ it was what she needed, too.

Content with promises of now, knowing that he was in the right place, Remus quickly fell asleep.

_To be continued..._

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_**A/N: Just want to thank y'all for the tremendous response to Part One. I've been so eager to get to the interim period between the hospital scene and Dumbledore's funeral, and I'm really pleased my take on the reconciliation is going over well so far. I promise the fic will start living up to its rating in the next update -- which I plan to post Friday, barring technical difficulties. **_

_**Reviewers get a Remus to share in the bedtime ritual of their choice. ;)**_


	3. Part Three

**Part Three**

Warm.

He was warm.

So warm, that his head ached behind his eyes. He squeezed them tighter shut against the light invading through flimsy curtains, and his heart began to race. If it was warm and light when he was sleeping, then something must be off. His room at Grimmauld Place had heavy brocade drapes that blocked out all the light beyond, even at its noonday brightest. It was drafty, and he always froze in that great four-poster bed, no matter how many blankets he piled on or how powerful the warming charms. Underground, his tatty blanket had been stolen, leaving him to huddle in a shadowy nook, with only his threadbare overcoat for warmth.

But there was no overcoat now. Remus' upper body was unclothed; his skin, damp with perspiration, stuck to the sheets as layers of blankets pressed down suffocatingly. Rolling onto his side, he tried to shove them off, only to wince as his legs collided with a pair of knees.

Someone else's knees.

And the ache behind his eyes suddenly became insignificant as his forehead connected with what could only be an elbow in the face. His shin seared as it received a sharp kick as a muttering person -- the owner of the knees and elbow, Remus could only assume -- yanked the bedclothes back over him.

Remus' eyes snapped open. The fog of half-asleep disorientation cleared from his mind as his vision focused on the pale face of Nymphadora Tonks, lit by soft grey pre-dawn light, in peaceful repose on the pillow next to his.

His heart leapt, but immediately plummeted to his stomach with the thought that this could only be a dream. He had shared a bed with Tonks before -- but no more, never again.

_Only in dreams. _

Dreams he'd grown to dread, because they were always so real, so beautiful, tantalising him with everything he wanted. They were worse than nightmares -- they _were _nightmares -- because waking from them only left him aching for what he could not have.

But _could_ this be a dream? He never resisted her in dreams, never made a conscious decision not to indulge his desires. Now he felt the war of physical need against his rational mind as he held back from kissing her awake... covering her body with his...unbuttoning the pyjama top she wore, which, though hidden underneath the duvet, he imagined had hiked up round her waist to reveal her smooth, flat tummy and below it, her purple knickers.

His eyes lingered on the shirt. It hung so loosely from her feminine frame that he could see her breasts pressed enticingly together as she lay on her side. Merlin, he wanted to cup those small breasts in his hands...to feel nipples harden under his palms...to have her warmth surge from his fingertips, up through his arms, into his heart...

Merely lying next to her, not touching, heat radiated from her. It was not at all an unpleasant sensation, despite how the unfamiliarity of it had woken him.

_Was _this a dream? Vividly as her apparition visited him in slumber, dreams never captured _this _aspect of being so near to her. Her cheeks were flushed, and her lips very red, the lower protruding in a slight pout. Her breath tickled his face.

It was very much morning breath; there was no romanticising that. But it was the detail that clinched the reality of his circumstances: Remus was very much awake, in bed at the Hog's Head Inn with the very real, very warm, Tonks.

Her face swam as the details of how he'd come to be here with her flooded his wakening memory.

Dumbledore was _dead_.

"Remus?"

At the sound of Tonks' slightly raspy, early morning voice, he blinked. The mist cleared from his eyes, and he found himself gazing into her wide dark ones. They lay looking at one another for a silent moment, then Tonks raised her hands to rub sleep from her eyes. When she had done, her eyes rounded slightly, as if she were surprised to find him still there.

"Remus," she whispered, a small smile curving on her lips. "I thought I'd dreamed you."

Chuckling softly, Remus curved one arm under his pillow and scooted a little closer to her. "I'm not a dream."

Tonks' smile widened and filled her beautiful eyes. Under the blankets, her hand slid up to rest on his hip. Remus mirrored her touch, grinning as he found, just as he'd imagined, that her pyjama shirt was pushed up around her waist. His fingers opened on warm skin -- and the thin, silky band of her bikini-cut knickers.

But his heart thudded heavily as Tonks flinched, face falling and going very pale. "That means Dumbledore's really…"

Though relieved that it was not his touch she'd shied away from, Remus' heart remained constricted, and he swallowed painfully. "Yes," he half-choked. "Dumbledore is really gone."

The dark eyes shone and Remus, battling the sting in his own, could not be sure whether it was her tears or his that obscured them. Tonks blinked, slowly, and hard. When she opened her eyes again, they were dry, but slightly pink; her long, dark lashes clumped together, shimmering. Her slender body trembled as she drew in a shuddering breath, and her hand moved up from his hip to lightly touch his chest. "But you're here."

Remus caught her hand and pressed it against him. "Here to stay."

His heart pounded against their clasped hands; he felt Tonks' pulse keeping almost the same driving tempo in her wrist. They lay so still and so quietly that he was almost sure he could hear their hearts beating.

The window behind him reflected in Tonks' eyes, and it drew Remus' attention to the shifting light in the room. Grey gleamed pale yellow as, in the world beyond, the first rays of sun burned over the edge of the dewy ground. The hazy beams filtering into the room played in her hair, highlighting the lighter strands, enriching the otherwise drab colour.

Releasing her hand, Remus reached up to brush an errant lock from her forehead.

Tonks' gaze dropped, and she shifted her shoulders back from him self-consciously. A stab of guilt tempted Remus to withdraw as well, but instead he wove his fingers into her hair and, sliding his other hand out from under his pillow, touched her chin and tilted her face up to his.

"You're the most beautiful sight I could wake to," he said softly, stroking her hair.

Though Remus meant it with the utmost sincerity, he understood why Tonks disliked her hair in its natural state. It was a nice, normal hair colour, and suited her pale face well enough. But it didn't match her vibrant personality in the slightest -- not like the pink, which he, so strangely, loved on her; sometimes he forgot it was not as natural to her as her dark eyes.

Watching the mousy tendril curl around his knuckles, the words he'd spoken to her just before they'd slipped beneath the sheets returned to him. He'd all but promised her that she would regain her ability to Metamorphose, as though it were somehow within his power to restore to her. It seemed almost an egotistical thing to think. Then again, he'd been all too willing to take the blame for reducing Tonks to this state. In a way, he realised now, the latter was _more_ egotistical, because he'd used it to support his own arguments that she deserved better than him.

What Tonks _deserved_ was for him to take responsibility for the hurt he'd done her, by making it right.

Cupping her heart-shaped face in his hands, he kissed her forehead. It was the slightest brush of his lips on her skin, skimming along the rise of her brow to her temple, then back again. Her lashes tickled his cheek as her eyelids fluttered closed, enticing Remus to bestow light kisses upon them, too.

He kissed the tip of her cute, upturned nose, and as he reached her cheekbone, he allowed his lips to move more teasingly on her skin. It was a spot that had always made her squirm against him, and a laugh rumbled in his chest as she did so now. _ He _shivered when her hand came to rest in the curve of his neck, fingers reaching around to his nape to play with his hair.

His lips parted and pressed more insistently as the trail he was kissing down her face came nearer to mouth. When he did reach her mouth, he paused just shy of it, leaving the smallest fraction of space between their lips. His blood pounded in his ears, in time with Tonks' quick, shallow breaths.

Tonks' hand pressed his neck in the slightest of nudges. Remus responded to the invitation, intending to kiss her softly, gently. Their mouths, however, met and immediately melted together, desperate for one another after so many months apart.

For the next few minutes -- it could have been hours, for all he knew -- the world spun frantically on its axis, a heated swirl of lips and tongues and hands, a surge of sighs and moans and beating hearts. Remus regained awareness when suddenly it shifted, and he found himself rolling Tonks onto her back so he could stretch over her. He'd slipped one hand inside the loose neck of her pyjamas, and his thumb was rubbing lightly over her nipple.

He started to withdraw his hand, but Tonks pressed hers over it, clasping it to her breast. With his body pressed so close to her, she could be in no doubt where this would lead if they continued. He dropped another kiss on her red, slightly puffy lips, then pulled back to look into her eyes.

"Is this what you need, Nymphadora?"

Gaze holding his unblinkingly, Tonks guided his hand toward the top button of her pyjama top. "Is it what _you _need?"

_She_ was what he needed. _Only Nymphadora._

Looking deeper and deeper into her dark eyes, thinking he might be getting lost in them, he understood that love, as much as it must strive to fill need, could not do that without admitting need.

"Only you," he voiced the thought, then kissed her again, holding nothing back, nor wanting to.

Tonks matched him.

There was a clumsy flurry of fingers and hands as he scrabbled to unbutton her top, and they both worked feverishly to divest him of his half of the pyjamas -- hindering more than helping, it seemed, which dissolved them to a fit of giddy laughter.

Mirth ceased the instant the last scrap of clothing fell away. For a moment they looked at one another, unabashedly, yet as if they were not quite sure they knew one another. Recognition dawned, however -- Remus knew he would never forget the way her eyes burned, stating so clearly that she was looking at the person she knew best, and wanted to know more because he was more important to her than anyone else in the world -- and they studied one another not only with eyes, but with hands, fingers, mouths...It was wonderful, and overwhelming --

-- but soon it wasn't enough. _Could there ever be enough of Nymphadora for him? _Remus wondered as he leant over the beautiful form she opened to him.

There was an awkward moment of situating themselves, of hitched breath and murmurs of concern and apology. But all of that quickly faded to hazy, distant memory as skin met skin, legs twined, arms encircled, bodies joined completely, as they never had been.

_As he'd given up hope they ever would be_, Remus thought in the moment of stillness as they learned to accommodate one another, and he, holding his weight off her by pushing up on his hands, marvelled at the sight of them, _together_. Her hands gripped his forearms, her chest rose and fell with rapid, shallow breaths, her neck and face were flushed.

Dreams had never captured the swell in his chest at the thought that _he _could make her look that way, make her fathomless dark eyes gaze up at him with what could only be called _expectation_. Imagination had never included unshakable confidence that he could meet that expectation, that there could be no question of it because they were _connected_, body and soul.

Never in his wildest dreams had he thought it possible to feel so close to another human being. He knew it could only feel so wonderful because it was so _right_.

Gently, Remus lowered himself, unable to hold back a pleased sound in his throat as Tonks, with a half-shy smile, pressed her hips up against his and wrapped her legs around his waist. He reached back to caress a smooth thigh, then stretched to kiss her earlobe as he whispered to her.

"I love you, too," Tonks said huskily against the side of his face, rubbing her cheek so that his growth of beard made the faintest of scratching sounds. Her hands slid up to his shoulders and pressed him down more securely against her, eliciting another moan from Remus, and emitting one herself.

"I think..." she panted. "I'm not a great expert, but...aren't you s'posed to be moving? Up and down, or...something."

Remus' head jerked up and, catching the gleam in her eyes, laughter rumbled out. "I'm no expert, either, but I believe _this_..." He rolled his hips; her gasp, her nails digging into his back as she breathed his name in his ear, made him shudder inwardly with pleasure as intense as the feel of her body around him. "...is an acceptable move in lovemaking?"

She continued to whisper his name, over and over as she joined him in finding their rhythm. Rising and falling, approaching and retreating...

"God, Nymphadora," Remus murmured, curving his hands over her breasts as she arched up into him. "You're so warm..."

Tonks made a sound that might have been a chuckle or a moan of pleasure; Remus loved the idea of it being a mixture of the two.

"That's because you're stirring my -- _oh, Remus!_" Her tummy drew quickly inward, and her hands splayed on his back as he leant into her, not wanting to lose a fraction the warmth of her skin against his. "_Mmm_...'cause you're stirring my cauldron."

Remus' raised his head where he'd been kissing the hollow of her throat. "What?"

Giggling, Tonks rocked her hips, which made Remus lose all interest in why she was going on about cauldrons at a time like this and, in fact, had much the same effect as if she'd cast a Memory Charm to deprive him of the knowledge that there was any such thing at all.

Until she began to, of all things, _sing_:

_"Oh, come and stir my cauldron,_

_And if you do it right..."_

Remus pressed his face into her shoulder and laughed. "Oh Tonks, not--"

Her hips pressed into his again, reducing him to grunts; _she_ somehow maintained the presence of mind to keep going, albeit breathily and tunelessly:

_"I'll boil you up some hot, strong love_

_To keep you warm tonight."_

"I can't..." Remus paused to catch his breath. "...can't possibly be doing this right if you..._Mmm...Nymphadora_...if you can remember Celestina...Warbeck lyrics."

"I reckon neither of us is, since..." Her arms went limp at her sides eyelids drooped. When she opened them again, they were hazy. "...since you're saying Nymphdadora..."

"You know...every time I dream about us...this song's playing."

Tonks giggled, abdominal muscles contracting tantalizingly, as they always had in the dreams, spurring him on. "You're daft."

"So I'm told," he murmured,

And then no one was telling anyone anything because it was just too much now to think. There were only feelings here: intense physical pleasure; but beyond that, sheer _joy_ -- and _gratitude_. Even after everything, they yet were blessed to have _this _for their first time.

Remus had never, not even in dreams, heard anything like her voice crying out; he'd never known that to collapse, trembling, panting, into her arms was what it meant to be _complete_.

He lay against her for some time, both of them catching their breath. When they had, there were more whispers of love, more tender kisses and caresses as they lingered, together. He didn't think he would ever be able to move away from her. His body was so relaxed, his mind so still, as if he'd drunk a Draught of Peace. But it was more than that. He'd passed so many years alone, thinking himself accustomed to isolation. Now that he knew what it meant to be with Tonks like this, he could never, _ever _let her go.

When they finally did move apart from each other, Remus chuckled at himself. This was closeness, too -- feeling the heat radiate from Tonks' body, watching her reach her arms back over her head to grasp the rickety iron headboard and, catlike, stretch her lithe limbs.

At some point, the duvet had half-fallen off the bed, and her small feet moving underneath it caught Remus' eye. She yawned hugely then, dissolving into giggles, rolled into his arms. She pressed a smacking kiss to his chest, and drew in a great breath that made her entire body heave. She exhaled with a satisfied hum, and laughed again.

It was contagious.

Trailing his fingertips over the rise of her hipbone, Remus asked through his chuckles, "Could you please inform me as to why we're laughing?"

"You mean besides the fact that I'm giddy from great sex?"

"And besides the fact that I find you ridiculously cute."

Abruptly, Tonks stopped laughing and shot him a pouting look, which was betrayed by her dancing eyes. "You've just slept with me, and you're calling me _cute_?"

"I don't recall doing much sleeping," Remus replied, "but yes, I am." He slid his hand over her hip, to her bottom. "If you had not interrupted me, you would have heard me say I find you dead sexy." She smiled, and he slid his lips languidly across hers. "And devastatingly gorgeous."

"Yes, you definitely look devastated," said Tonks, dryly. "Flatterer." Before he could retort with an assurance of sincerity, she asked, head cocked in a look of genuine curiosity, "D'you remember when I said about first times not being that great?"

Remus had no desire to think of that conversation -- that _quarrel_ -- or what had led up to it, the time they'd almost taken this step, for entirely wrong reasons, under entirely wrong circumstances. For which he was utterly ashamed. The last thing he wanted to feel now was shame.

"Yes," he said hoarsely. "I remember."

"Obviously I'd no idea what I was talking about," said Tonks, laughing again, pushing away the negative thoughts that had crept into Remus' mind. He kissed her, but after a moment she pulled her lips from his and stared at his chest with a serious look on her face.

"I'm glad," she said quietly, watching her fingers trace patterns on his skin, "that it was like this. That it was good, and...we won't regret. I mean..." She caught her lower lip between her teeth in a moment of hesitation, then said, "I know _I_ won't."

Did she feel his heart leap beneath her hand? Merlin, it was good to be of the same mind in this regard. Surely it boded well for all that was yet to come as they rebuilt their relationship.

"I could never regret being with you," said Remus.

Not only _could_ he never, but he never _had_, not once, even though he'd tried desperately to convince himself and Tonks and everyone that he never should have been with her. In his heart he'd cherished every moment they'd shared, and hated how he'd thrown her away -- and Tonks knew it. That was why she hadn't let go, why she'd fought for him, tooth and nail.

Remus kissed her again, and heard her sharply indrawn breath as he rolled her onto her back. Her arms wrapped around his neck, fingers tangled in his hair as she responded with equal ardour.

Until suddenly, with a cry of "Oh!"and an expression of epiphany that made her eyebrows vanish into her dishevelled hair, Tonks pushed Remus away and vaulted out of bed.

For just an instant Remus admired her lithe, naked form, then she tripped over the dangling duvet, and then her own two feet, as she stumbled to the bathroom.

"Tonks?" Remus called a moment later, when it registered in his still hazy mind that she had not shut the door. Sitting up, he fished through the tangle of sheets for his pyjamas. "Are you all--?"

The question died on his tongue as he rose to pull on the trousers and peered through the open bathroom door.

Tonks stood at the sink, back to Remus. The mirror reflected her face scrunched up so intensely that a vein rose on her forehead.

_She was trying to Metamorphose. _

Eyes darting up, widening as they saw Remus' reflection behind hers, a flush raced up Tonks neck. She pulled her gaze away from him and concentrated her efforts even harder on her magic.

It was the most heartbreaking sight Remus had ever seen. Hateful inner voices clamoured that he was to blame, and utterly inadequate to mend what he had, through carelessness, broken. He should not be here.

Ordering them silent, Remus stepped into the bathroom and slipped his arms around Tonks' waist. Her slight, naked body sagged against him; to Remus' dismay, her skin was no longer warm, slightly sticky with sweat, but cold, clammy.

"I thought…" The mirror reflected a girl close to tears, and Tonks shook her head vigorously as she regarded herself, then shut her eyes against the reflection. "Why can't I…?"

"You've been without your powers for almost a year," said Remus, slowly, reaching up with one hand to stroke her fringe back from her forehead. "Your emotions…It will take time."

He pressed a kiss to her temple, and in his peripheral he caught the reflection of her mouth curving in a grin.

"We look good together like this," she said.

The brightness had returned to her eyes, and Remus couldn't stop himself from smiling as he watched the reflection of his hand sliding from her waist up over her breast. It fitted so perfectly in his curved palm.

"Indeed," Remus said, but wonder gave way to seriousness. He was not, by any means, content with having merely distracted Tonks from her troubles. He wanted to reassure her of his love and constancy throughout the length of time of her healing.

"However long it takes," he said, "you will always be beautiful to me, Nymphadora."

Her rounded bottom pressed into him as she leant back. "If it's going to take time," she asked, fighting vainly against her widening smile, "does that mean we can do what we just did over and over till I can go pink again?"

Chuckling, Remus turned her head so he could kiss her mouth. "A million times, if you're up for it."

Turning fully toward him, Tonks quirked an eyebrow challengingly. "Are _you_?" Gleaming mischievously, her eyes dropped and continued their downward trail over his body.

"Maybe not a million times in one day..." Speech became impossible as slow heat coursed through Remus' body, as though transferred from her admiring gaze -- which really made him want to conduct experiments to test the validity of his statement. A lot of things were happening to him that he'd deemed impossible.

Yet even as her fingers fluttered over his stomach, passion simmered into a calm tenderness, and Remus cupped her face in his palm.

"Talking will help, too," he said. "We've a great deal to sort."

Tonks grabbed his hand and made as though to drag him to the bedroom. "Let's get it sorted, then. In bed. So we'll be ready."

Remus' heart leapt at her enthusiasm. He was the luckiest man in the world, to have an utterly irresistible woman like her practically dragging him to her bed. And yet he remained rooted in the bathroom doorway, so thoroughly satisfied that all he could think of was how happy he was to see her old cheerfulness returning.

"Shouldn't we have breakfast first?" he asked, tugging on her hand to pull her back to him. "And perhaps you ought to put some clothes on?"

Tonks glanced down at herself, heaved a dramatic sigh, and retreated to the bathroom. "Yes, and I've got to work."

She climbed into the shower, slipping and nearly taking the curtain down in the process. "We'll sort things tonight, all right? In bed. And naked. Merlin, I don't even want to deal with the chaos it'll be today..."

As she muttered to herself, Remus returned to the main room, boiled the kettle and set the teabags in to steep -- the Earl Grey she'd bought to remind her of him in his absence.

While their bread toasted, he moved to the window, pulled back the curtains, and lifted the sash.

A warm summer day had dawned.

_To be continued..._

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_**A/N: I continue to be bowled over by your response to this fic. Thanks so much for your lovely comments and encouragements. This week, reviewers get to choose which Remus they'd like to wake up to: the tender lover, who gazes tenderly and bestows soft kisses; or the sex god, who's determined to test whether a million times is really an impossible feat...**_


	4. Part Four

**Part Four**

The crack of Apparation broke the steamy afternoon stillness of the cramped, shabby room at the Hog's Head Inn. Remus looked up from laying out tea on the table and just glimpsed Tonks' face, peaky and etched with lines, before she stumbled into his arms.

"Long day?" Remus' voice complimented her appearance, low and raspy from fatigue and overuse.

"Oh God, Remus..." His shoulder muffled her words. Turning her head, but keeping her cheek pressed close against his him, she went on, "All I did was tell about the battle over and over..."

"Same for me," said Remus.

Tonks hugged him tighter. "I'm sorry. It must've been so much harder for you to see all the people closest to Dumbledore than for me to talk to detached law enforcement personnel."

"Different," said Remus, thinking there could have been no comfort in addressing something so personal from a professional perspective. He did not deny, however, that his duties had been easy to carry out. He had Apparated and Flooed more today than he'd done in his entire life to date, making sure all the members of the Order of the Phoenix had the same information about what had happened the previous night at Hogwarts, and were on guard for whatever was to come.

_Whatever was to come_.

The future was frighteningly vague.

Thanking Merlin for the young woman in his arms, Remus dropped a kiss on the top of Tonks' head, then leant his cheek against it. He could be sure of her when nothing else at all was certain.

Her fingers clutched the back of his shirt, twisting the fabric. His hands slid up her back, and through her Auror robes he felt how tense her shoulder and neck muscles were. He kneaded them with the heel of his hand, and Tonks sighed heavily.

A movement of her head made him lift his. Tonks raised her face to him and said, "It was bizarre to talk about. I felt like someone else was saying those things, but it was me." She shook her head. "No matter how many times I tell the story, it doesn't seem real. Not at all."

"I know. Every time an owl comes, or I see a Patronus, I think this one will be from...from _him_...telling us what to do next."

"It was chaos." Tonks' shoulder muscles coiled even tighter as she spoke in clipped, frustrated syllables, eyebrows slanted sharply downward. "A great flock of chickens running about with their heads cut off. We got _nothing_ done."

"There's not much _to_ be done," said Remus, pressing his fingers into the knots between her shoulder blades. "Not immediately, anyway. For now all we can do is be on our guard until after...the funeral..." Merlin, it was the most impossible thing his mind had ever stretched to process, the idea of _Albus Dumbledore _being buried. "...and until the students return home. Then Minerva will be able to focus her attention on what Dumbledore would want from the Order now..."

Tilting her head, Tonks regarded him for a moment, as though she did not quite agree with his statement. Remus' arms went slack around her, and abruptly, she turned and looked at the table.

"Ooh, bangers and mash!" she cried, eyes round, haggard features lighting up as she took in the heaped plates. "I'm starved." She pulled out a chair, but stopped short as though struck with a sudden thought, hovering over the seat and shooting Remus a sidelong glance. "This isn't _Aberforth's_ bangers and mash, is it?"

Remus let out a snort of laughter as he seated Tonks. "Takeaway from the Three Broomsticks."

"Rosemerta's not working?"

"She's in hospital. Tom sent a girl over from the Leaky to look after things while she recovers," Remus replied, taking the chair across from her. The table was so small that their knees touched under it. Remus didn't mind in the slightest, especially not when Tonks nudged his legs apart to slip one of hers between.

Tucking into her food, Tonks asked, "How's Aberforth? I Apparated straight in here. I should've stopped downstairs and spoken to him..."

"Back to his surly self," Remus replied. "Perhaps a little quieter. I'm sure his regulars will do him some good. Dung told me he'd come over and get good and drunk with him tonight. Somehow I think my sarcasm was lost on him when I told him how helpful that would be."

"Glad to see Dung's got out of Azkaban a reformed wizard," said Tonks. She covered her mouth as she realised she'd spoken with sausage in it. She chewed, swallowed, and washed it down with a sip of pumpkin juice. "You know I actually ate Aberforth's cooking once? I was having a drink last Christmas, and Dumbledore came in and bought me a Special."

Despite an inner jolt at the reminder that Tonks had spent last Christmas alone, Remus nearly choked on mashed potato as he laughed at the last bit. "Dumbledore had Christmas dinner _here_? What about the Hogwarts feast?"

"He ate at the school, but apparently he liked..."

Remus winced slightly at her use of the past tense.

"...Aberforth's turkey. I only had a bite," Tonks said, dabbing her sausage in mashed potato and popping it into her mouth. "But I'd _horrible_ indigestion, all night, didn't sleep a wink...I wondered if it did the same thing to Dumbledore..." Her eyes bent, and she went on in a small voice, "Of course I was so angry at him, I almost hoped..."

Her fork clattered to her plate, which scraped across the table as she leant heavily on her elbows, head falling into her hands, fingers clutching at her hair. Remus stood and quickly rounded the table, banging his hip on the corner, and stood behind her chair. He rubbed her back in what he hoped was a soothing way, because he'd no idea what else to do or say.

"I got over being angry with him," Tonks said, sniffing, "but I never apologised. He always looked so sad when he saw me...I don't think he knew I was sorry, or that I trusted him. I wish..." She twisted round to look up at Remus with watery eyes, and laid a hand over his on her shoulder. "He really hated what he asked you to do."

Remus shook his head, and did not meet her eyes. Of all the things he'd cost her this year, this one brought one of the greatest burdens of guilt: he'd made her waver in her trust of Dumbledore, and destroyed any sense of closure she might have had about his death.

"If I'd understood what he asked me to do," he said quietly, "none of us would have had any regrets."

"No, Remus." Tonks clutched his hand. "You don't know that. You made mistakes, but so did I. And maybe Dumbledore did, too."

How many times had Dumbledore told Remus that he was as fallible as anyone? Remus had never believed him -- until this year, when his mission overwhelmed him and seemed so futile. But he'd refused to entertain the creeping fear that Dumbledore might have sent him on a fool's errand. He'd never have got along without Tonks, if he'd not clung to belief in Dumbledore. He'd had to believe he'd done right in giving her up.

If he had not given her up, how might it have been different?

So many questions, so many what ifs...It was dizzying, and impossible to focus on any one thing. The only thought that he was able to catch hold of, was how desperately he wanted to talk out their problems -- now, in this lull, while they'd time to focus on themselves.

"Thanks for this," Tonks' voice broke into his cacophony of thoughts, and he found her glancing apologetically at her barely-eaten dinner, "but I'm afraid I'm not very hungry anymore."

"Neither am I," said Remus, hollowly.

Beneath his palms, Tonks rolled her shoulders. "D'you reckon you could give me a back rub? I've got so much tension."

Struck with a sudden inspiration, Remus' spirits brightened. He leant over her shoulder and pressed a kiss her cheek. "Do you know what's a better idea?"

A few minutes later, Tonks was moaning pleasurably, with closed eyes, as she slid into a steamy bath. The bubbles glittered like foamy diamonds in the flickering light of a dozen votive candles in a rainbow of colours Remus had found in the bathroom cupboard.

"This is the real reason I don't care about _too old, too poor, too dangerous_," she said, lying back against the gently curved, inclined end of the bathtub.

Though he'd taken these concerns completely seriously for the past year, Remus found himself laughing easily at Tonks' teasing. Maybe it was because he knew they'd soon be thrashing out the issues that were so long overdue for talking though, and because he'd finally realised that Tonks joked about them precisely _because _she took them seriously.

"Why?" he asked, slipping out of his shirt and hanging it on the end of a towel bar, then unfastening his belt. "Because I cope with loss and guilt by transfiguring narrow, rusty claw-footed bathtubs into Jacuzzis for two, when you actually requested to sort things out naked _in_ _bed_?"

"Mm. Although, you're a bit slow on the uptake. Mainly I wanted was to get naked with you, and Jacuzzi for two means you're s'posed to be in here with me."

Remus stepped out of his trousers as they slipped down to the floor, and didn't bother hanging them neatly with his shirt before he shed his underwear and climbed into the opposite end of the bathtub from her.

"No need to be cheeky now," he said, stretching one foot to pinch her bum with his toes.

She jumped slightly, sloshing water, and glared playfully at him from beneath doused fringe.

Trying not to grin, Remus gestured toward the double tap, flowing with pink and blue water. "I went to a great deal of trouble to reproduce the faucet from the prefects' bathroom."

For a moment Tonks admired it with a look of delight, but then she pulled a face and crossed her arms over her chest with a _hmph_ that rivalled Mad-Eye Moody for grouchiness.

"Seems to me," she said, "you're just rubbing it in that you were a prefect and I wasn't."

"Yes." Remus shut off the water. "I'm known for my tendency toward being a smug git."

Tonks poked out her tongue.

"Will it assuage your hurt feelings," Remus asked, twisting to reach into an ice-filled bucket behind him, "if I offer you a glass of wine?"

The look of mock irritation on Tonks' face was replaced with an eager grin. "I was wrong. _This _is why I don't buy any excuses that you're unsuitable. Because you're so damn _wonderful_."

Remus was glad for the occupation of pouring wine, because it provided him a reason to duck his head and hide his reddening face. It was ridiculous to blush over the woman he loved calling him wonderful when his legs were twined with hers as they lounged together in a bath. Not that he wasn't the slightest bit self-conscious about _that_ -- which was, perhaps, even more ridiculous, as they'd spent the morning doing much more intimate things than this.

But intimacy, Remus was fast remembering, came in as many varieties as Bertie Bott's Every Flavour Beans. There was the kind he'd revelled in last night, as they brushed their teeth together, which he was unable to pinpoint precisely _why_ it was intimate because it was such a very little thing; there was love-making, which spoke for itself; and there was this, relaxing together in a truly private place, _naked_.

How many other forms of intimacy would he discover by simply sharing in the minutiae of every day life with Tonks? He felt overwhelming gratitude toward his lucky stars for giving him the opportunity to find out.

Which made it all the more urgent that they get their relationship sorted, so they could do so, unalloyed.

Handing her a glass of wine, he glanced at her lifeless brown hair, stomach twisting as he pictured how bravely she'd tried to mask her devastation after she'd failed to morph this morning.

They had to sort things so he would not see that look again.

But...where did he begin?

Tonks began for him. "When you broke up with me..." She traced her finger along the lip of her wine glass, "you said something about me realising someday I'd made a gigantic mistake. You can't have..." She took a quick drink. "Was that an excuse, Remus, or are you really afraid I'd...leave you?"

"How could I think that," Remus replied, rubbing his foot along the inside of her calf, "after this year?"

As she took another drink, Tonks' eyes darted downward, but were lit with a pleased expression as she smiled slightly. She set the glass on the edge of the tub, then, sinking lower into the bubbly bathwater, returned Remus' affectionate gesture and slipped her own foot along his calf.

"You couldn't be rid of me," she said."

"Thank Merlin I couldn't."

It was tempting, with their gazes locked this way, feeling the slick warmth of her blushing skin against his, to abandon conversation. Remus drew one knee up, and broke eye contact as he sipped his wine slowly.

"I'm not afraid you'd leave," he said after a while. "I'm afraid you'd _stay_."

Tonks' eyebrows collided, forehead wrinkling deeply above them. "That doesn't--"

"It's one thing to _choose_ unconventional relationship roles," Remus interrupted. "You love being an Auror, and you're very good at it, and I know you'd want to continue with your career regardless of whether you were with me, or..."

Not wanting to continue along that train of thought, he quickly swallowed more wine.

"You'd continue with your work whether I could contribute financially or not," Remus went on. "But the fact is, there are no choices for us. The arrangement might work for now, but someday...you might want...other things than a career..."

By _other things_ he meant a family. _Children_. But surely now, before they'd worked through everything, was far too soon for that discussion.

Though he still wasn't looking at her, he felt the intensity of her dark eyes on him, asking him to elaborate.

"No matter what you wanted," Remus said, "you'd have to keep working. You might be unhappy. And yet you'd stay with me."

The steamy air of the bathroom felt very oppressive, impossible to breathe in, during the eternity that passed before Tonks said, "And you're afraid I'd resent you."

"Can you blame me?"

"Not really." Water sloshed over the edge of the tub as she sat up and reached for her wine. "Not since I'm afraid of the same thing."

Remus put his glass to his lips as he processed this unexpected revelation, but did not drink. Lowering the goblet again, he asked, "You're afraid…I might resent _you_?"

"Because you don't choose not to work," she said. Her fingers clutched the stem of her glass so tightly that Remus half-expected it to break, and they would have wine as well as bubbles, in their bath. "God, Remus, you're such a powerful wizard. You're a fantastic teacher. Hell -- you're as capable as any Auror on the force. Maybe more."

As her words of praise tumbled out, Remus set his wine on the edge of the tub. It was dizzying -- wonderfully so -- to hear her, who he held in such high estimation, say these things about him; he didn't need a drink to take the edge off things when true euphoria came from knowing how Tonks saw him, from knowing he could trust her view of him.

Her lined forehead, however, dulled the pleasant feelings somewhat.

"Any time I've talked about my job," Tonks went on, gaze flickering downward, "especially my success...there's always a niggling thought that I'm rubbing your nose in it."

Remus leant forward and rested a hand on her knee protruding through the bubbles. "You've never made me feel that way."

"I know," Tonks said. "But I _could_ do, down the road, especially if we've got..."

Cheeks colouring slightly, Tonks raised her glass to her mouth and sipped, as though to cover for the fact that she was turning away from a thought she did not want to voice. Especially if they had what? A family?

"Especially if we're struggling to make ends meet," Tonks said. "I know how much it bothers you not to have the means to do those traditional male things like take me out for dinner dates, or buy me gifts when you want to. I can only imagine how you might feel if we're scrimping for necessities on just my salary..."

It all came in a rush, her voice high and shaky. When she turned her eyes up at him, they shone, reflecting the candlelight. Drawing a deep breath, she said, just above a whisper, "Whether it's dates or groceries, Remus, I'd die if I took away your pride. I love you for your dignity."

At a statement like that, Remus couldn't help but hold his head up higher, and his shoulders more erect. He'd felt so many deep parts of him come to life in the past day, and yet here was another one he'd forgotten -- the pride he'd allowed to be snuffed out this year -- flaring hotly in his chest, burning away the self-loathing he'd fostered.

He'd been so worried about how his condition and its limitations might affect her, that he'd never considered her side of things. All that had concerned him seemed so trivial now, in the light of what had weighed on Tonks' heart; he'd convinced himself that she need things he couldn't give her -- things she'd never asked for -- when all the while her energies had been focused on how her _livelihood_ made him feel. She feared making him feel unmanned.

He raised his hands to push her damp hair back from her face, threading his fingers into it. Holding her face in his hands, he kissed her firmly, then pulled back to look into her eyes -- the beautiful eyes that looked past the grey, patched exterior and saw the man he wanted to be, the man he was.

"You give me my dignity," he said.

Tonks smiled, but her eyes were grim. "That's a gigantic amount of responsibility. I hope I can be what you need."

Remus started to tell her of course she could, but he caught himself. She was taking a leap of faith as great as he was. His hands slid down from her face, into the water.

"Now you've mentioned it," Tonks said, tremulously, "it does scare me that I might want different things someday down the road. Does that mean we shouldn't be together? Because there's room for resentment?"

Remus shook his head, and leant it back against the cool marble edge of the tub. For a long time, there was no sound except for the trickle of water when one or the other raised an arm to take a drink, or the occasional drip from the faucet.

"I do love being an Auror," Tonks said at last. "I'm not sure I could ever give that up."

Not entirely sure where she was going with that, trying not to entertain the thought that her future dreams had changed during their year apart, or that they might have regressed after all, Remus sat up and wrapped his hands around her calves. He indicated for Tonks to put her wine down, then gently pulled her across the slick bottom of the bathtub toward him. He settled her between the V of his legs, knees bent out of the water, feet on either side of his thighs.

Running his hands up her smooth legs, to her knees, he said, "I would never ask you to give it up."

"I know." Tonks smiled, eyes soft, but after just a moment, her expression became grim, distant. "It's so dangerous, though, being an Auror. I was almost killed at the Department of Mysteries. Every time I go to work, I risk not coming home. Don't you think I wonder sometimes if that's something I should put you through?"

"Do you remember what you told me last year?"

"Last year?"

"When you were in St. Mungo's," Remus explained. "How you felt last night, about my near miss...That was exactly how I felt when Bellatrix hexed you. I'm sure you haven't forgotten how that battle got us thinking about how uncertain life was. You wanted us to make declarations of love. But I..." His gaze dropped.

"You wondered if it was selfish to be involved when it might mean leaving me alone and heartbroken."

Remus looked up and met her eyes. "And what did you say to that?"

Tonks smiled faintly. "I think I quoted some Muggle poetry about loving and losing being better than not loving at all."

"That's right." Remus caught her hand, and raised it to his lips. "You won me over with poetry."

Her chirping laughter echoed off the tiled walls. "You make it sound like I wooed you. Bit more like walloping you about the head with it, don't you think?"

Remus grinned and kissed her hand. "I'd say I find strong women irresistible, but really it's just you."

Her smile softened, and so did her laughter, as she girlishly -- almost shyly -- brought his hand to her mouth and kissed his knuckles.

She held his hand to her mouth for some time, gazing vacantly at it. Remus watched her smile gradually fade away into an expressionless line, which eventually became a deep frown, and her eyes hardened as she fixated on a thought.

"What about all my psychotic relatives?" she blurted, looking up with eyes glittering with conviction. "They know I'm in the Order. Thanks to Kreacher they probably know you and I are more than friends."

"Thank you for _that _very disturbing thought, Nymphadora. Kreacher as voyeur?"

In an abrupt shift of mood, Tonks' eyes became dark crescents as she grinned impishly. "Makes you glad we only just got round to having sex, doesn't it?"

Laughing low, Remus wished he could come up with a witty retort, but he found himself robbed of jokiness as he noticed pink nipples, shimmering with beads of water, peeking out from the suds clinging to her curves.

"No," said Remus huskily. Reaching out to curl his hands over her breasts, he teased the hardening nipples with his thumbs, admiring the contrast of their deep pigment next to his pale fingers. He squeezed her curves gently and leant in to brush his lips across her moist, supple ones; he barely tasted her wine.

"No, sweetheart," he murmured against her mouth, I think we should have been doing this a long time ago."

Laughing again, Tonks wrapped her arms around his neck, and Remus moaned in his throat as she pulled herself closer against him. What bit of her was producing the more exhilarating sensations, he couldn't decide: her small, firm breasts pressing against his chest; her bottom on his thighs, legs squeezing lightly around him; her tongue coaxing his mouth open and teasing the inside of his lips. In the end he gave up trying to compare and left it at every part of Tonks being so delightful that it didn't do her justice to think in this incoherent way.

In fact, Remus so thoroughly gave himself over to sensation, relishing the way she clung to him after she'd pulled her mouth from his, tucking her head under his chin, that at least a full minute elapsed before he was able to register that she trembled against him because she was _shivering_, and that he understood the language she was speaking when she said, "The water's gone cold."

Gooseflesh pimpled up on Remus' upper body as Tonks slid herself off his lap and hunched lower in the water in an attempt to keep warm. He turned on the multicoloured taps again, which this time poured out shades of purple. The running water, made more resonant by the tiled bathroom surfaces, kept them from talking, but Remus was content to recline against the curve of the tub and watch, smiling, as Tonks cupped her hands together and scooped up bubbles, holding them up and cocking her head at various angles to examine the translucent hues within.

With a pang, he remembered doing the washing at her flat, and how she'd morphed her hair to match the suds in the sink and given the term dishwater blond an entirely new meaning. For a long time afterward, it had been the thought he'd used to conjure his Patronus.

Was Tonks thinking of that now, as she admired the bubbles? Had this talk brought her any closer to regaining control of her powers?

Sudden quiet brought him back to awareness of his surroundings. Tonks was leaning over him, having just shut off the tap. Her eyes held his.

"Even you've got to admit, Remus," she said seriously, "if anyone in this relationship's dangerous..." In spite of all the distractions in between, Remus' mind recovered and immediately recalled where they had left off in their serious conversation. "...it's me."

"It seems a ridiculous notion to be afraid of you, when I bring Fenrir Greyback into the equation. But yes...we each bring a substantial amount of mortal peril into this relationship."

Sinking back into the water, Tonks nodded, once, as though they'd just struck a bargain; her expression was so matter of fact that Remus half-expected her to stick out her hand and shake hands on it.

But they were far from finished.

Remus caught her foot and massaged the arch with his thumbs. "What about the other ways I place you in jeopardy? Werewolves don't make the best dinner guests, you know."

As she regarded him with her lips pressed together in a straight line, Remus was unsure whether she'd caught the deeper implication behind his flippant words. Just as he was about to explain, Tonks spoke.

"Is there any way being with you could affect my life worse than the Order? I've jeopardized my job and my reputation well enough on my own, don't you think?"

Remus couldn't argue the point, but he silently held that it was not entirely the same. Her work for the Order, when brought to light, would, in all likelihood make her a war hero. Perhaps his could, too -- but he could not allow himself too much optimism about the attitude toward werewolves in a post-war Wizarding world, in which his kind -- his kind in _their _eyes, he amended -- had supported Voldemort.

"What about your family?" Remus asked.

"If Mum knew about the Order, I think she'd react quite a lot like Percy Weasley."

Remus just glimpsed a deep frown tugging at her features, when Tonks abruptly spun on her bottom, turning her back to him, and slid between his legs to lean against his chest.

"That might not be the best way to sit..." Remus' voice was tight as his arms automatically wrapped around her, fingers unable to resist stroking the sides of her breasts. She shivered against him, this time accompanied by a sigh that told him she very much liked what he was doing; and in turn, he very much liked the way her body moved against him. "I won't be able to continue speaking in coherent English for long."

"You can say my name during sex," Tonks replied, glancing back over her shoulder with a coy expression that did absolutely nothing to assist Remus with coherency. "I think you've got remarkable control."

Something about the last line was far less flirtatious than it sounded. Was she referring to his control over the wolf? She'd hinted at such a thing before. It was not something he particularly wanted to discuss at the moment, but other serious subjects pushed themselves to the front of his mind.

"There's another thing," he said. Her back and shoulders tensed against him. He didn't want to go on with the thought, which was sure to heighten her tension, but he had to. "With our Order duties..." He wondered vaguely just what they would be. "...we haven't the luxury of putting our relationship before duty. There will be sacrifices. It will not be easy. It certainly will not be ideal." 

"This year was hell, but we made it through."

"You were angry at Dumbledore for most of it."

Immediately, as Tonks' head fell forward, cheeks crimson, Remus cursed his lack of tact.

"That's not really the same," she said softly.

Remus sighed and squeezed her middle in what he hoped was a reassuring way. "It's not really different, either, love. I know I handled our relationship badly in light of the assignment -- I should have had more faith. But even if I _hadn't_ broken it off, can you honestly say you wouldn't have been just as frightened and hated the mission for my sake?"

For a long moment, Tonks said nothing. Finally she shook her head.

"But we wouldn't have had all that pain between us," she said with conviction, giving her head a defiant little toss; Remus smiled faintly at the jut of her chin.

"Even when I doubted Dumbledore," she went on, "I never stopped believing in what we were doing. And…and maybe I wouldn't have hated your mission so much if you hadn't got so bloody depressed and thought so lowly of yourself."

Remus pushed back a clump of damp, dark hair that clung to her cheek, and kissed her skin.

"Remarkable a witch as you are, Nymphadora..." He slid his hands upward once more, over her breasts. She snuggled back against him, and placed her hands over his, as if to hold them there. Remus loved the gesture -- not that he needed persuading to touch her.

It seemed wrong to go on with the thought he'd begun, but he had to.

"I am not convinced -- much as I've considered the idea -- that, if we had stayed together, I would have felt any less demoralised by how I lived. Coming home to you…" A chill shuddered up his spine, and he leant his forehead in the dip between her shoulders, as though close scrutiny of her pale, wet skin would block out the ugly, shameful memories of his life underground. "I don't like to think of it."

He half-expected Tonks to argue, and he honestly wouldn't have minded if she did, since the important thing was getting all this out in the open. He couldn't deny what a beautiful thing it was to have her defend him, to defend _them. _

But Tonks merely laced her fingers through his and, after an appropriate space of silence, said, "You're right. I'll have to try and deal better with whatever might happen. Do you…do you trust me?"

Remus slid his hands up to her shoulders and turned her to face him. His eyes moved over her -- literally naked before him, as he was before her. _They were naked together._

His hands glided over the wet, warm skin of her shoulders, up her neck, and cupped her face. He kissed her slowly, thoroughly, then pulled back to look into her eyes, bright with breathless longing.

"I trust you with my life and my heart, Nymphdora."

She smiled, wearing that expectant expression once again. She had to want him to ask the same question, back to her. Remus wanted to, but hesitated. Could she really, truthfully, say she trusted him that much? He'd broken her faith.

Tonks' small hand reached up to settle on his neck. "And you'll help me do what I've promised?"

Remus' heart pounded; could she feel his pulse? She'd sensed his doubt, and expressed perfectly the idea to put his self-doubt to rest.

Relationships were about _trust_. Not because either partner was perfect -- though he was sure Tonks came closest to perfection of any partner in the world -- but because both partners could help each other to be trustworthy.

It was Lily trusting James to have grown up; it was Arthur trusting Molly to be content; it was Bill trusting Fleur to love the whole heart, and not loathe the disfigured face. The choice, which he and Tonks had discussed at length at the start of their conversation, was not the circumstance. No one got to choose circumstance; every couple he knew had found themselves in dire situations. All anyone ever got to choose was the person to go through those circumstances with.

And they did get through them.

"You'll help me keep _my _promises?" Remus asked.

Tonks leant in and answered with a kiss.

Lingering against his mouth she murmured, "No one's whole, Remus. We never have been."

"You make me whole."

She drew back, one eyebrow raised. "Is it such a great stretch to think you do the same for me?"

"Yes." Remus pushed her fringe back from her forehead and kissed the smoothness, so fair against her hair. "But…I'm determined to try."

Remus feathered her warm, damp face with the lightest of kisses, just touching the very tip of his tongue to her skin to taste her. Breathing in short, shallow gasps, Tonks parted her lips and turned her head, trying to coax him to her mouth. Remus kept on with kissing every inch of her face, and though she tried to give a little _hmph _of frustration, there was too much of a pleasurable sigh in it to make it really convincing.

But after a moment she pulled back, sitting back on her heels, and asked, "So where's the age thing come in?"

Not having quite recovered his faculties, Remus said, "Beg pardon?"

"We covered _too poor_ and _too dangerous_. "What about _too old_?"

Her bluntness cleared the fog. Remus thought of Arthur Weasley accusing him of implying that Tonks was too young.

_Guilty as charged. _

"I was being a condescending prat," Remus admitted, not meeting her eyes. "I assumed that because you were...inexperienced...you had not considered all the complications. I treated this as a case of first love..."

"Well it is," Tonks piped in a voice that made Remus look at her again. "For both of us."

It was, she was right, and _Merlin_ -- as much as he'd fretted this year about it, he honestly could not think of a thing more thrilling than being Nymphadora's first love.

_The love of her life. _

He took her hands, and when he spoke, his voice felt choked and tremulous with the joy that was swelling up inside. "Years don't matter. You are wise beyond yours. In fact, I think you may be the older of the pair of us."

The admission, while it smoothed Tonks' features with more relief, and continued to melt away a little more of Remus' doubt and guilt, did not come without a pang. His thoughts conflicted with what he'd said earlier, that he was not sure if being with her would have changed how he'd perceived himself last year. He'd no doubt their relationship would have been under tremendous strain -- but could it have been any worse than the strain they had faced apart?

Bearing up under stress was not at all the same as enduring pain. At this very moment they were both coming off a difficult day; but they'd come home to each other, embraced, kissed, shared a meal, and now a bath. Remus knew the peace, and the lightened load, would never have been attainable alone.

"I'm sorry," he said, curling their hands in toward his chest. "If…if we'd talked sooner, perhaps this would not have happened."

"Maybe not," Tonks agreed. "But maybe it would've."

They would never know.

The important thing was not repeating past mistakes.

"I'll do better," said Remus firmly. He raised her hands and dropped kisses on her knuckles. "I promise."

Tonks awkwardly moved onto her knees, slipping on the slick bottom of the tub, and he caught her waist to steady her as she straddled his lap. This time, when she leant in for a kiss, Remus eagerly pressed his lips to hers, as if to seal his promise.

"I think," Tonks said, flashing a suggestive smile, pressing her hips against his, "that I've no further use for your ability to speak in coherent English."

"What about my control you praised so highly, that enables me to pronounce _Nymphadora _whilst in the throes of passion?"

Her hand dipped into the water, disappearing among the bubbles, and rendered him utterly speechless.

_To be continued..._

* * *

_**A/N: Four down, one to go! **_

_**Thanks very much to everyone who commented on the previous chapter. Your feedback is so encouraging. This time, reviewers get a Remus to help them de-stress in any preferred manner including, but not limited to, candlelight bubble baths. **_


	5. Part Five

**Part Five**

"Look alive, Lupin!"

At Mad-Eye's growl from the train compartment door behind him, Remus snapped to alertness, flicked his wand toward the window, and tried to arrange his face into the expression of a who hadn't been caught brooding when he was supposed to be securing the Hogwarts Express for tomorrow's journey back to King's Cross. But Mad-Eye hadn't become the best Auror of the age because he was easily fooled. His magical eye, bulging from the craggy face, seemed almost to glow as it scrutinised Remus.

"We finished here, then?" Mad-Eye asked.

Remus nodded. Mad-Eye stepped sideways into the aisle, wooden leg clomping on the floor, allowing Remus room to emerge from the compartment.

"Yes," Remus said, and nodded again, trying to clear his mental fog. "We'd best move on to the school. I apologise, Alastor, for this taking longer than I had anticipated. It's my fault. I am..." To avoid that penetrating gaze, he allowed his eyes to drift over Mad-Eye's grizzled head. But he still felt the magical eye locked on him.

"Preoccupied," Mad-Eye supplied the elusive vocabulary.

Remus sighed, and leant back against the compartment wall behind him. "Yes."

For the first time since he'd known Alastor Moody, both eyes glanced down at the floor. The retired Auror looked like an old wizard as he shifted his feet, fingers clutching his walking stick self-consciously.

"I, er..." Mad-Eye looked up suddenly and continued gruffly, "Dumbledore passing's hard on all of us, but for some more than others. I know he meant--"

"It's not Dumbledore," Remus interrupted, and thought that if only he weren't so preoccupied, this really would be a red-letter day; he'd never seen Mad-Eye looked surprised before, either.

He stepped around the older wizard and strode down the aisle toward the front of the train, Mad-Eye _hmph_ing and thumping in a fair imitation of the Weird Sisters' drummer as he followed.

No, it wasn't grief that had hampered Remus' work.

Emerging from the train, Remus turned his head, squinting, and raised a hand against the glaring noon light. His eyes had smarted as sharply last night when, after their bath that had turned into so much more than a soak in the tub, Tonks, wrapped in a towel, had staggered on sluggish limbs to the vanity and flicked on the two lamps either side of the mirror.

She'd studied her face for just a moment, still wearing a sleepy, satisfied grin. From the bathtub, where Remus had not moved a muscle since she disengaged herself from his arms, he admired her skin -- wet and shining in the flickering light from the low burning candles, soft from the steamy water and flushed from their passion. He'd never seen her face more radiant: so young and happy and, for the first time in months, _peaceful_...

Then, quite suddenly, the glow had been extinguished. Even now, the next day, the image of her face had not faded from Remus' mind's eye. He clearly pictured her pretty features drawn into sharp lines. Her eyebrows sloped, forehead furrowed between them. Dark eyes hardened. Lips pursed. Jaw clinched.

Remus' heart had stopped as he sat up in the tub, and he'd forgotten to breathe. Knuckles had turned white as his fingers clutched the edge, mirroring Tonks' stance at the sink. His muscles had tensed with the same effort Tonks put into morphing.

Or _trying_ to morph. Always before there been that look of concentration when she morphed, that twitch of effort...But last night her taut, white lips had parted to reveal clenched teeth. She'd never tried so hard.

And not a hair on her head had so much as flickered colour.

Guilt stabbed at Remus' heart. Had it had been like this for Tonks that first day she discovered she couldn't morph? Had she known the cause? The thought of her alone in her flat, bewildered, frightened...Remus' chest had constricted, and his lungs burned; he'd ached with the need to comfort her, to make up for all the times he'd failed to be there for her. But as he'd tried to push himself into a standing position, his muscles and joints seemed locked in place as Tonks' features were. When he'd tried to say her name, his voice lodged as a hard knot in his throat.

Then, just when Remus had thought they would both collapse under the strain, Tonks' small frame wilted. As though released from _Petrificus Totalis_, Remus had suddenly snapped into motion.

"Nymphadora," he'd croaked, fumbling to wrap a towel around his waist as he stood.

Blinking at him, Tonks had smiled faintly. "S'okay, Remus. Just been a long day. We should go to bed."

She'd bent then, to rummage through a drawer for some toiletry item, as Remus cast about for some way to re-open the door she'd shut with false reassurance. It had come to him as Tonks, muttering about how she was always losing her bloody hand crème, opened another drawer. Remus, coming to stand behind her, had glanced over her shoulder into it and saw her cauldron, an assortment of phials and jars crammed inside. He'd noticed them the earlier in the night, whilst snooping about for bubble bath and candles, and suspected what they were, but had been too flustered by the strange idea that such things would be kept so familiarly alongside Tonks' hygiene and beauty supplies.

"What are you doing in there?" Tonks asked a pink bottle with a fancy top as she'd plucked it from the collection of medicinal items. "I swear to Merlin, this hand crème's bewitched to switch drawers."

She'd started to shut it, but Remus caught her hand. It wasn't the ideal way to get back to Tonks' morphing issues -- indeed, he had not been sure how it would lead back to it at all -- but at the moment, he'd been at a loss to think of anything else. At least she could be thankful she did not have _his _affliction, he'd thought, considering the ironic opposition of their shape-shifting issues; his changing body would always be an affliction, and while he knew Tonks loss of control affected her keenly, she'd not lost her fundamental self, as he did each time the moon waxed full.

"Are those the ingredients?" he'd asked, hoarsely, and Tonks had looked at him, askance. "Are those things for...my Wolfsbane Potion?"

"Oh!" Recognition had dawned on Tonks' face then, and suddenly Remus found himself losing control of the discussion as she pushed him back away, setting her hand crème on the countertop, and fished into the cauldron for a phial.

"Yes, these are the Wolfsbane things, and there's stuff like aconite in here, so please, _please _be careful, Remus. Don't stumble in here at night looking for something for a headache. In fact..."

A flick of her wand had conjured a label for the previously nondescript bottle, emblazoned with bold, red capitals: _"DANGER! KEEP OUT OF REACH OF WEREWOLVES!"_

Her peals of mirth had echoed off the bathroom walls and tiled floor, and Remus, though he had not meant to distract her with jokes, was unable to stop his laughter from ringing out, mingling with hers, as much with amusement at the joke as with joy to hear her laugh again.

When they'd got into bed, however, cuddling and caressing and kissing had been brief affairs. Before a few minutes passed, Tonks had rolled onto her side, away from him, and Remus had lain on his back, staring up into the dark as his stomach tied itself in knots. Tonks could give him what he needed to face his problem with a smile...but he had not yet found the formula that could put hers to right.

He'd barely slept, for fretting over it; and if Tonks' tossing and turning were any indication, she hadn't either. But though wakeful, there was no attempt at discussion. What was to be said?

Worse, this morning they'd spoken only of their day's duties, and Tonks left for work without another attempt at morphing.

"Remus." Mad-Eye's gravelly voice beckoned him out of his musing, back to the platform at the Hogsmeade Station.

"It's Tonks," Remus blurted. "We've reconciled, but she still...She has not regained her ability to Metamorphose."

As Mad-Eye regarded him, magical eye boring into him, Remus tried to work out what in Merlin's name had possessed him to bare his soul to _Alastor Moody. _Was there anything more un-vigilant than airing one's laundry on a job?

Mad-Eye responded, "Always harder to fix things than to break them."

Nodding ruefully, Remus shoved his hands into his trouser pockets and, shoulders hunched, started down the platform toward the road to the school.

"But it's not because you miss that daft hair," Mad-Eye commented, falling into syncopated step with Remus.

"I _do_ miss it," Remus retorted, a defensive edge creeping into his voice as his insides clenched at the criticism of his favourite coif. "It's unconventional, but pink suits her." But his conviction was carried away when as a bitter wave of realisation struck that the last time Tonks had been unwaveringly pink had been the night they'd talked about getting married.

Mad-Eye grunted. "You don't think she completely trusts you."

"I thought sorting things..." Remus caught himself. He'd known it couldn't be so simple. He'd known it would take time. He heaved a great sigh, and shook his head. "How can she? After an entire year of my--"

"She will," Mad-Eye interrupted, catching Remus' shoulder as he halted on the top step of the platform. "You're a trustworthy man. Always have been."

Even as Remus squelched an odd desire to laugh at the absurdity of Mad-Eye encouraging him about his love life, everything inside Remus loosened, and his mind cleared. He thanked the wizened Auror, then said, "Let's get those Hogwarts grounds secure, shall we?"

"Lead on, Lupin," Mad-Eye said, clomping down the steps behind him.

* * *

Shortly after Remus and Mad-Eye set to work casting extra security spells around the lakeside area designated as the funeral grounds, they were startled to hear an unexpected greeting. 

"Wotcher, gents!"

Turning, they saw Tonks striding purposely toward them between the two sections of chairs, scarlet Auror robes sweeping proudly behind like a flag unfurling. She carried something in both hands; as she neared, Remus identified them as two bottles of pumpkin juice.

"You're not on duty here today," Mad-Eye said.

"Very well, thanks, and how do _you_ do?" Tonks deadpanned, cutting gleeful eyes up at Remus -- which loosened one of his anxious knots of worry over the awkward, quiet morning. "I requested Robards to send me here for the afternoon. You know, because it's a hot day and I thought you pair could use a cool drink -- and so there'll be a professional here making sure things get done properly."

Her cheeky grin became a wild-eyed look as she caught her foot on the front corner chair and went sprawling. She crashed to the ground, knees punching into the grass, too quickly for Remus to make a leap to catch her and before the Cushioning Charm Mad-Eye shouted could take effect. With her hands occupied and not able to catch her, she landed off-balance and pitched forward. As Remus braced himself for the inevitable sound of crunching glass, he was hit with a strange sense of déjà vu as Tonks somehow managed to cradle them so that they remained intact.

His train of thought careened back in time to the day it had all begun.

The dreary back garden of number twelve, Grimmauld Place...A blur of pink hair and purple t-shirt as Tonks clattered down the porch steps...Banter over Butterbeer... _"I've got a feeling you fancy me," _her sweet voice whispered in his mind._ "Ask me for a date...Just one date. You'll never know how it would be if you don't try."_

Blinking back to the here and now, Remus grinned down at Tonks, splayed on the grass. "A professional what?" he asked, reaching down for the bottles, then handed them to Mad-Eye as he thumped up behind. "Circus--"

"If you end that with _clown_," Tonks interrupted, scowling, yet accepting Remus' hand up, "I'll hex you to next week."

"--performer," Remus finished. "I was going to say performer. Which would include acrobats."

"Crap acrobats, if they're doing what I just did."

"Been a fair few months since _you_ did what you just did," Mad-Eye observed, magical eye roving over Tonks, settling on her hand that Remus was still holding. Remus caught her other hand and turned them palms up to inspect them for scratches. They were only streaked with dirt and grass stains.

"That's because Remus was away for a fair few months," she replied. "He throws my equilibrium right off." Tonks pulled her hands from his grasp and wiped her palms on the legs of her jeans. "Bugger it," she muttered, when she spied a small tear in the denim.

"But I thought ripped jeans were in?" Remus said. She shot him a totally unconvincing glare that told him she knew exactly what memory he referred to. Lips twitching against a smile, he said, "Now, Nymphadora--"

"Don't call me Nymphadora, Remus!"

"--just because you were looking at me," he went on, pleasantly, "and not at where you were walking, does not mean your acrobatic feats are my fault."

"Of course not," Tonks said huffily. "That's giving you far too much credit when the problem is simply that I lack acrobatic _feet_."

Mad-Eye made a raspy sound in his throat that _might_ have been a laugh. "Glad to see you getting back to normal," he said to the young Auror -- but his eyes were on Remus.

"Normal bossy, you mean?" Tonks said, with a devilish but a pleased look in her eyes. "Give one of those juices to Remus, Mad-Eye, and drink up, both of you." She clipped her fingers. "Quickly! We've a lot of work to do."

With three of them to set the security spells, they made up for the time Remus and Mad-Eye had lost on the Hogwarts Express. Even so, the sun hung low and large in the horizon, hazy golden beams casting long shadows, by the time they reached the last unprotected section near the tomb. Tonks' and Remus' stomachs seemed to be taking turns doing noisy impersonations of Mad-Eye's grumbling.

"Empty stomach's no good for vigilance," said the retired Auror. "You two go on -- I'll finish up here."

"We can soldier on," Tonks said. "It'll only take us a few minutes."

"Don't need three people on this," Mad-Eye argued, dispassionately, eyes on the tomb. "I..."

Comprehension dawned, and Tonks' professional expression softened to one of compassion and sorrow.

"Need to do this myself," Mad-Eye mumbled.

In a bold move, Remus reached out and laid a hand on Mad-Eye's shoulder, mirroring the older wizard's earlier gesture. For once in his life, Mad-Eye did not flinch, wand at the ready, at another's touch.

"We all loved him," said Remus quietly, "but you knew him far longer than most of us. Grief is great."

Characteristically, Mad-Eye responded with a grunt, then stepped away from Remus, wand poised to cast the final round of security spells. Remus knew in his heart, however -- as he had come to know so many things over the past two days -- that Mad-Eye had felt the words, and taken comfort from them.

_If only,_ Remus thought, letting his gaze wander to Tonks' mousy hair as he took her hand, _he could do the same for her._

_To be continued..._

* * *

_**A/N: One to go! I solemnly swear to post before the Thanksgiving holiday. **_

_**Thanks for your feedback about this fic! This time, reviewers get their choice of comforting Remus: the one who clasps your shoulder and says just the right sympathetic thing; the one who broods because he can't think of the exactly right thing to say; the one who likes to see the bright side and will make jokes to make you laugh; or the one who kisses and cuddles.**_


	6. Part Six

**Part Six**

It seemed appropriate to Remus that he and Tonks maintained silence as they trudged across the Hogwarts grounds to the front gates, leaving Mad-Eye to pay his private tribute to their fallen leader and friend.

But approaching Hogsmeade, the village din carrying through the still summer evening air, the awkwardness of last night and this morning hung thickly, uncomfortably, between them, even though they were holding hands. Tonks' fingers and palm felt stiff, and sticky, in his. Or was that _his _hand?

Why was it like this? Remus knew there was no _Evanesco_, no _Reparo _for their troubles, but they'd talked last night -- _really talked_. Surely they could not have reverted to _this. _What must he do to reassure her about her powers? Was there anything? What if the damage was--?

"So what d'you fancy for dinner?" Tonks' voice broke into his thoughts.

"I..."

Remus' mouth hung open for a moment, then he shut it. Somehow the casualness of Tonks' question, and her corresponding tone, tripped him up -- as did the thought that not only would there be no more lonely meals taken solely to quell hunger, but that the very choice of what he would eat now would be shared with her. It was yet another of those everyday things that he'd never considered could contain such intimacy.

He opened his mouth again, and sounded ridiculously flustered when he croaked, "Hogsmeade hardly offers a broad selection."

"Sure it does. Just depends on your mood. Three Broomsticks if you're boring and want ordinary food cooked well. Hog's Head if you're feeling daring and want to flirt with indigestion."

Remus chuckled, as much from her joke as with relief at the lightening atmosphere between them. "I suppose you'd know, having been stationed here for the better part of a year."

"That's right." Tonks squeezed his hand. "So what mood are you in?"

"At risk of you labelling me boring, I would like to eliminate the Hog's Head from our list of options."

Tonks darted gleaming eyes sidelong at him. "_Fuddy duddy._"

Not about to let her get away with that, Remus suggested, "What about Honeyduke's? Would you label me youthfully daring if I requested a dinner of sweets?"

Tilting her head, Tonks considered this. "More like youthfully foolish."

With a scowl, Remus dropped her hand and folded his arms in mock-affront. "Really, Tonks, I fail to see how Honeyduke's makes me foolish while the Hog's Head makes me adventurous. Honeyduke's is at least a _pleasurable_ way of developing indigestion."

"That just makes you sound reckless and indulgent."

Remus narrowed his eyes, and Tonks' laughter pierced the air. It felt considerably less oppressive as her fingers brushed his when she squeezed her hand into the gap between his arm and side, threading her arm through his. Her other hand moved to rest on his arm, and she leant her head against his shoulder as she hugged his arm to her body. Her affection left no room for the feelings that had crept in and made Remus feel isolated from her. His rigid neck, shoulders, and back relaxed completely.

Slowing their pace, he laid his free hand over hers on his arm, curling the tips of his fingers under hers. He turned his head to drop a kiss on the top of hers, and Tonks raised a beautifully happy face to him: pink-cheeked, velvet-eyed, sweetly smiling.

He stopped walking, irresistibly drawn to kiss her soundly, right in the middle of the road -- but Tonks had let go of his arm, attention diverted to something up ahead. When Remus followed her gaze, his mouth fell open, mirroring her gob smacked expression.

"_Bloody Merlin's beard_," Tonks whispered. "There's a _queue _to get into Three Broomsticks?"

"It certainly appears so."

Remus blinked a few times, just to make sure he wasn't seeing things. No -- there really were several dozen witches and wizards of all shapes and sizes and ages milling about the inn and tavern; many carried suitcases or carpetbags. How he'd been unaware of the throng till now, was beyond him.

"All in for the funeral," Remus said, chest tightening.

Tonks sidled closer, and he wrapped his arm snugly around her waist.

"Somehow," she said, "even though there were all those chairs set up at the school..._this _didn't really occur to me."

"No. Nor to me."

It made no sense, but somehow the sight of all these visitors in the normally quiet village made the whole thing more real, and even more surreal at the same time.

"C'mon." Tonks slipped out from the crook of his arm, caught his hand, and urged him on up High Street.

"Where are we going?" Remus asked, dazed.

"Hog's Head's our only option, I reckon," Tonks said. "I'm starved, and I'm not waiting a sodding hour to eat at Three Broomsticks."

"Hog's Head's got nearly a two hour wait," grumbled a passing wizard en route to The Three Broomsticks. He looked like the sort of person with whom Mundungus Fletcher would keep company, and the type who wouldn't know how to behave at any establishment less seedy than the Hog's Head.

Remus and Tonks stopped in their tracks and gaped at one another.

"Honeyduke's, then?" Remus asked with a quirked eyebrow.

Tonks rolled her eyes. "We could go back to London. If everyone's here, the Leaky'll be empty. Or we could go someplace Muggle. Remember that place we ate hamburgers last summer?"

"We couldn't go there without Mad-Eye," said Remus. "Anyway, are you really up for London? You've already been there and back today."

"That'd be terribly sweet," Tonks said, and poked him playfully in the side with her index finger, "if only I didn't know you were thinking about how much you'd like Chocolate Frogs for dinner instead of being concerned about how much I've travelled today."

"Chocolate Frogs would help you recover."

Grasp tightening around his hand, Tonks turned and tugged him on toward the Hog's Head. "There's beans-on-toast in our room."

"Thrilled though I am to hear you talk of _our _room..." Warmth rushed through Remus as Tonks wove their fingers together and glanced up with a soft, knowing look reserved for him. "...a day of casting security charms with Mad-Eye works up rather a more substantial appetite than beans-on-toast."

"So London, then?"

"Yoo-hoo! Over here, m'dears!"

Once again they stopped, hands falling apart, and turned toward the direction of the warbling, vaguely familiar female voice carrying from the side street across from the Hog's Head. A stout witch with a shiny black bun was flagging down passers by.

"I'm open for dinner!" She had to be using a _Sonorus_ to make her voice carry that clearly. "I've just whipped up a chicken casserole with dumplings!"

Remus raised his hand to rest in the small of Tonks' back, gently nudging her to cross the street.

Tonks looked up at him as if he were mad. "Oh no. We're _not _eating at Madam Puddifoot's."

"Why not? She doesn't look to have too many customers, we don't have to travel, and...it's very pink."

"And you think maybe that'll get me in the right frame of mind to morph?"

Remus' eyes dropped to his battered shoes as his stomach twisted, but an inner jolt that said she was teasing and harboured no resentment, made him swallow the sick feeling and meet her gaze.

"Indulge me?" he asked. "I've never actually taken a date there."

Tonks tried to look dubious, but failed as her heart-shaped face flushed with happiness. "I reckon it is sort of a first love thing to do."

"_Only _love," Remus corrected, touching her cheek and leaning in for a kiss. Joy welled within him at the feel of Tonks' unwavering smile as she pressed her lips enthusiastically, yet softly, to his.

But Tonks looked considerably less starry-eyed as Madam Puddifoot hustled them into her frilly-to-the-point-of-soppy establishment, crooning and growing misty-eyed as she talked of the tragic events that led to her keeping the tearoom open beyond normal hours.

When she left them alone to fetch their dinners, Remus leant across the table and murmured, "I think we may have to drop in Honeyduke's yet, to help us recover from not travelling."

Tonks giggled -- rather more quietly than was usual for her, but apparently much too loudly for the few other patrons. Remus felt eyes on them, and turned to see a trio of elderly witches dressed austerely in high-necked black robes and hats with veils; a married couple who looked old enough to have been schoolmates of Dumbledore's; and the proprietress herself, statuesque in the kitchen doorway with two plates, staring at them as though they were holding everyone in the establishment at wand point and had just ordered them to hand over all their gold.

"You know..." Tonks leant conspiratorially across the table when Madam Puddifoot had delivered their food, poured their wine and, clucking her tongue, bustled off again to tend to her other customers. "...it's a blessing I'm not morphed right now. Just think how the poor old things would've looked if I'd dared to laugh on the eve of a funeral _with pink spiky hair_."

Remus chuckled, and sipped his wine. "We are very lucky to have been close enough to Dumbledore to know full well that he would want us laughing and pink-haired tonight."

Tonks' eyes danced over the rim of her glass. "I think he'd be even more amused to see _you _with pink hair than me."

"Yes. I can just imagine him winking and telling me it brings out the colour of my eyes."

"Or matches the blush on your cheeks," Tonks teased.

Remus, face indeed prickling with warmth, laughed low; but his breath caught as he stood on the threshold of the door Tonks, in her typical unassuming way, had opened for the conversation they must have.

As usual, he hadn't the faintest idea where to begin.

And as usual, Tonks led the way. "Sorry I wasn't very talkative this morning."

"You're not the one who should be apologising," said Remus emphatically, reaching across the table for her hand. "It's me who--"

"Don't blame yourself, Remus." Tonks laid down the fork she'd just picked up, and covered his hand with hers. "I don't."

Remus squeezed her hand, hoping the gesture communicated his gratitude, then released it. As he spread his napkin over his lap, he said, "I've thought of nothing all day but what might have been going through your mind last night and this morning. Mad-Eye caught me moping about it. I count myself lucky to be alive, actually."

Tonks chuckled around a bite of dumpling. It was the only sound for a few minutes as they ate.

At last, Tonks laid down her fork and, after a sip of wine, said, "I was thinking about the solution to my problem." She paused briefly, then went on, "I've an idea what it is. "

Her dark eyes locked with his in a look of expectation tinged with mischief. It made Remus wonder whether she expected him to try and guess her solution, but he certainly could not do, as his breath had been stolen again, and his vocal chords were rendered useless by the heart that had leapt into his throat.

Gaze never wavering from his, Tonks raised her wine glass and drank another long sip. She set it on the table again. With an expression of utter sincerity, she said, "You haven't tickled me."

"I haven't--"

Remus noticed a twitch at the corners of her mouth, and this time it was _his _laughter that turned scandalised heads. Tonks' face split in a grin, but she managed to hold back and laugh soundlessly; her trembling form made their glasses rattle on the tabletop.

His mirth swelled with thoughts of how much he loved this young woman, who reminded him of that important truth that even the most troublesome of problems had silver linings, and could be laughed at. She held nothing against him, because she truly loved him. She understood just how much he wanted to put things to right, and she understood that he needed her help, so was doing what she could to put him at ease. There could be no witch as remarkable as her.

Remus Lupin might be a cursed man -- but he doubted there was any who was more blessed.

When he had got himself under control, he asked,"Shall I come over the table and tickle you pink, or shall we save that for when we're back in _our room_?"

They gazed at one another again, an entirely different breathlessness stealing over Remus as the space between them tingled with magic at the thought of what they both knew awaited them in that shared hotel room.

Yet it only awaited them if they sorted things.

Seriousness settled over them both once more, fading their smiles.

"What do you think the solution is?" Remus asked. "What can I do for you?"

Tonks became very intent on picking up her fork and jabbed at a bit of dumpling and vegetables.

"Physically," she said after a moment, not looking at him, "we've moved past where we were. And we've got our doubts out in the open. But..."

She took a bite and chewed, slowly, a look in her eyes as she stared at her plate that reminded Remus of how she'd looked last night during their bathtub conversation; he'd had a feeling then that she was holding back her true thoughts.

"You know you can say anything," he encouraged.

Tonks looked up, eyes intense. "We're not..." She picked up her wine glass so quickly that a bit sloshed, and took a drink. "We're not quite where we left off."

The dumpling Remus was swallowing went down too hard.

"You didn't just break up with me, Remus."

Her voice echoed with the pulse of his blood in his ears, against the din of the tearoom. In the midst of it Remus heard the question Molly had posed to him during his first reprieve from underground: _"Did you ask Tonks to marry you?"_ His face prickled with shame as he recalled his non-committal, cowardly answers: _"Not officially...We talked about it..."_

Tonks' eyes beckoned him. She was waiting -- waiting again for him to acknowledge _exactly _what lay between them, exactly what they were to each other. His fingers toyed with the stem of his wine glass, but he did not drink from it.

"I asked you to marry me," he said, voice choked. "I broke off our engagement."

It was not a surprise to see her eyes close or her brow crinkle slightly at the pain those words brought.

However, her long lashes parted again to reveal shining eyes, and she smiled again. Somehow the admission had brought relief.

"Sort of," Tonks said. "It was very hard to feel _un_engaged when I knew you'd never try to be with anyone else. You would always be faithful to me."

Her words rang true, in part because Remus had thought them before himself. It was an altogether different matter to hear Tonks voice them. The trust she expressed was humbling. It occurred to him how frustrating it must have been to Tonks to know that their separation was not an issue of love. He regretting having put her through that; it seemed so unnecessary now that they'd begun to talk through their fears and insecurities and determined to face them together.

At the same time another, not inconsequential, measure of guilt melted away with the realisation that Tonks had always been absolutely sure of the constancy and depth of his love; in some way, that had been a blessing to her that in the midst of the pain of their separation, she at least had been spared the pain of doubting his love.

"It just felt..." Tonks was saying, "...not together. And...wrong."

Her eyes darted across the table to his plate, and she nudged his leg with the toe of her sturdy boot. "S'all right to eat, you know. You don't have to stop just because we're having a serious conversation."

Remus took her at her word, and he found that the simple act of eating somehow made the whole thing less serious. They weren't having a discussion that questioned intent; she wasn't trying to persuade him to change his mind about their relationship, as she had so many times this year. They were getting back to where they should be. Because they both wanted to be there.

The thought gave Remus the confidence to mention one of the more painful discussions they'd had about this very subject -- though he didn't resist the urge for a drink before spoke. "You said once that you knew my heart was married to you."

Tonks' cheeks went pink, and she ducked her head as she picked at her food. Remus rubbed his foot against hers under the table, drawing her gaze again.

He gave her a small smile. "It was a very apt way of putting it. It _is _a very apt way of putting it."

She returned the smile, and scraped food onto her fork. As she chewed, her smile faded, and her eyes were very intent on his face as she laid her silverware across her plate.

"If it's apt..." She swiped the corners of her mouth with her napkin. "...why haven't you brought it up?"

"I've wanted to," Remus admitted, "but after everything, I wasn't sure...I was afraid of pushing you. I thought you might need more time to...trust me."

"I think..." Tonks tucked a strand of hair behind her ear and caught her lip between her teeth in an expression that was half-shy even though she was gazing levelly at him. "I think it'd be just the thing to help with the trust issues. And...the morphing ones."

"So..."

Remus' racing heart lodged in his dry throat, and he swallowed painfully. He felt rather light-headed, and as if the room were spinning, and kept his eyes on Tonks' because she was the only steady thing in it. Discombobulating as it was, it was a good feeling. It was one of the happiest moments of his life, and he felt nearly as giddy as the day he'd got his Hogwarts letter, more eager and joyfully disbelieving than he'd been the first time they'd discussed this dream-like topic.

"So if I were to catch you off guard," he said deliberately, "and, in a wholly Marauder-like fashion, propose..."

_Dear Merlin, he was really about to say it -- he could say it, and he'd never thought he would again._

"...propose _marriage_..."

He almost couldn't go on, so powerful was the urge to leap out of his chair, over the table, and express all the rest by kissing her senseless.

"...I could be reasonably sure of being accepted?"

Tonks pressed her lips together in a small smile that seemed to be holding back a burst of emotion and excitement very much like the urges he was restraining. There was a flicker of something else being held back, too, but Remus was distracted by how her beautiful eyes glittered enticingly at him across the table.

"Reasonably."

Remus came _very_ close to expressing emotion and excitement in the manner best restricted to private, when Madam Puddifoot approached their table with a tray laden with desserts and steaming cups. "Apple crumble and coffee, m'dears?"

Though Remus was not especially hungry -- and a glance at Tonks' eyes, darting back and forth between the crumble and her unfinished plate of dumplings and casserole and looking a little overwhelmed, told him she was not, either -- Madam Puddifoot's tearful speech about how Merlin knew they all needed something to cheer them up in these dark days compelled them to accept it.

But as he tucked into his crumble and watched Tonks pick at hers with her fork, Remus immediately recognised her actions as indicative of something more than mere lack of appetite.

Before he could inquire, Tonks blurted, "What if they won't let us?"

"What if they won't let us what--?" Remus' fork slipped and scraped gratingly across his plate, setting his teeth on edge. "Oh."

He reached for his coffee, sipped too much, and burnt his tongue. Hoarsely, he stated, "What if they won't let us marry."

Tonks nodded, eyes wide and imploring and miserable. Why the last? Was she embarrassed that she'd asked? Or thinking that perhaps it was not, after all, a simple matter of being together? Merlin, _could _such a prospect, with legal ramifications, make her reconsider...?

Playing with the handle of her coffee cup, Tonks said, "The night you broke up with me, you said the Umbridge legislation might not allow...Is it a possibility, or were you just trying to convince me you weren't..." She swallowed, and her voice became very small. "...suitable?"

"I don't know," Remus replied, shaking his head, cringing as she did that he'd allowed such a word as _unsuitable_ to creep into their relationship vocabulary. "I wouldn't be surprised if we tried, and Umbridge found out and drew up legislation against werewolf marriages..."

"If that happened," Tonks said just above a whisper, as though she were afraid speaking the question louder might bring the worst to pass, "would you be with me anyway? Or would you try to convince me to...be with someone who _could_?"

It had been idiocy for him to consider for one moment that _Nymphadora_, after all she'd borne from _him_ this year, would be put off by a discriminatory _law_ -- but Remus was too relieved to dwell on that. He could reassure her about this.

Reaching across the table for her hand, he said, "Does it mean I'm selfish if I claim to want your happiness, yet couldn't bear not being the man to give it to you?"

"You've just dipped your sleeve in apple crumble."

Remus looked down to see that his arm, indeed, rested in his dessert. He didn't move it, but tightened his hold on her hand.

"I think that sort of selfishness is allowed in love," said Tonks. "I'm glad you think that. It's completely human, you know.

"It would drive me mad."

"I know." She squeezed his hand. "But you don't have to worry about that. Ever. No one but you could make me happy. I wouldn't try to be happy with anyone else. If I can't make it work with _you_, I won't be able to make it work with anyone."

It was a strange thought, but Remus knew Tonks was right. Relationships _had _fallen apart from seemingly lesser issues than theirs endured.

Or perhaps...perhaps their problems really weren't as great as he had imagined. They'd got on with few bumps in the road for nearly a year before he'd gone underground.

Perhaps, even facing lycanthropy, they had it easier than many other couples.

"What about my parents?" Tonks asked, unblinking eyes holding him. "What if they don't approve?"

Remus pulled his hand away, and used his wand to clean the apple crumble from his sleeve. He'd met the Tonkses only once, last summer when Tonks had been in St. Mungo's following the battle at the Department of Mysteries. Her parents had treated him with nothing but politeness, yet somehow their formality and restraint suggested disapproval as clearly as outright hostility would have done.

"I've got to be honest," he said, "I don't relish the idea of alienating you from your parents…"

He shook his head, thinking of how high tensions had run at the Burrow between Molly and Fleur. At the same time, it was encouraging; perfectly normal people, who weren't Dark Creatures, faced disapproving in-laws, as well.

"But then..." He reached for her hand again, this time shoving the apple crumble aside keep his robes out of harm's way. "...my not being with you has hardly brought you closer to them, has it?" She had not spent Christmas with them, and as far as Remus knew, last saw them at St. Mungo's. "I suppose I shall just have to learn to accept that _they_ might not accept. It's not my choice, nor your parents'. It's your choice."

Tonks did not look _entirely_ satisfied with that, and Remus realised he was not, either.

"It's _our _choice," he said, firmly.

So radiant was the smile that bloomed on Tonks' face that Remus thought, for a moment, that she'd morphed. She had not done -- but the colour of her hair seemed the furthest thing from her mind as she leant across the table, rising slightly out of her chair; Remus, though he'd been at the brink of saying something else which he hoped would solidify her trust in him, mirrored her movement, and forgot what it was as her soft lips glided lightly over his.

Tonks kissed him just tantalisingly enough that, though brief, it couldn't be called a chaste kiss. Especially not with her foot rubbing upward along the inside of his calf like that, and with her fingers skimming his forehead as she brushed back his fringe.

Pulling away so that her lips just grazed his mouth, she murmured, "Let's go back to the Hog's Head."

"No wonder the Hogwarts boys always bring their dates here."

Laughing, Tonks called for Madam Puddifoot to bring their bill, then fished her purple velvet purse out of the pocket of her robes. Hastily, without looking him in the eye, she thrust it at Remus. "Will you sort it while I use the ladies'?"

As he watched her hurry to the loo, part of Remus suspected she'd only gone for his benefit.

He loved her for it.

Yes, there was still a prickle of shame that this was how it was likely to be for them, for years and years -- him counting out the money _she _earned. Still lingered a niggling fear that someday it would not be enough. Yet he felt last night's words resonating within him, kindling the blaze they'd sparked: _"I don't want to take away your pride. I love you for your dignity." _

They walked a fine line. The fact that Tonks had been compelled to walk away from him just now spoke volumes about how far they had to go before they could be at ease about the financial problems that plagued their relationship. Remus knew that for now, accepting her simultaneously awkward and graceful gesture was essential to gaining her trust that he would try to make this work. In the long run, he knew they would have to find some other solution than Remus simply keeping up the role of provider in public. After all, it was his self-perception that had put them through relationship hell this year. _He_ knew, even if Madam Puddifoot did not, that the Knuts and Sickles he placed in her hand were not his.

For now, his pride was spared by the simple knowledge that Tonks knew how this arrangement made him feel, that it mattered to her because it mattered to him.

And he was extremely grateful when she returned from the ladies' room and rescued him from the bewildering situation of trying to console Madam Puddifoot that of course apple crumble was an appropriate dessert for times of mourning and that they'd only picked at theirs because they were too full of dumplings and casserole; Tonks interrupted with a confident request for a takeaway box, as they would surely need comfort food later tonight, or after the funeral.

"'Course," Tonks said at a teasingly low pitch in Remus' ear as they exited the tearoom, "there's another kind of comfort food I want just now--"

Her words trailed away with an unintelligible exclamation of delight as Remus caught her round the waist, covered her mouth with his, and Disapparated them.

Even in the few seconds of travel, their kisses became heated, and they materialised in their room at the Hog's Head Inn with Remus unbuttoning Tonks' robes, and Tonks already pushing his off his shoulders. It was difficult to retain awareness of what their hands were doing, with her lips pressing and parting against his, their tongues teasing and twirling in a fiery dance. But soon he felt the taut flesh of her tummy, hot against his, and the lace of her bra prickling his chest.

Without breaking their kiss, he released her first with one arm, then the other, to shrug his arms out of his dangling robes and unbuttoned shirt. He helped her push her trousers over her hips; her lips released his as her head fell back in a joyous shriek of laughter when he slid his hands under her bottom, letting the trousers fall to the floor as he lifted her out of them and onto the bed.

"Remus!" she gasped through giggles, pressing a small hand to his chest, holding him back as he started to join her in bed. It occurred to him, as he panted for breath, heart hammering, how fast they were going. He'd got carried away. This would be over before they knew it if he didn't slow down. She needed him to--

"Open the curtains, Remus."

The room had been spinning, everything in it blurred and hazy, but it stood still now, and cleared, as Remus stared at her. "The curtains?"

"Mm. Those dingy yellow things hanging over the windows that look a bit like sheets -- they're really called curtains."

"I know what they're called."

As Tonks' fingertips skimmed over his chest, sending shivers over his skin, her face the epitome of innocence. "You looked like you didn't know what I was talking about. A lot of blokes don't know what curtains are. You bachelor types--"

"I'm not a bachelor." The ancient iron bedstead groaned as he leant forward on his palms and pressed her back into the mattress. Tonks squealed as he nipped at her neck. "I'm a man who is very, _very _in love. In moments such as these, knowledge of domestic textiles flees the brain and is replaced by knowledge of how to unfasten lingerie..."

She laughed and squirmed as he slid his fingers underneath her shoulder blades and fumbled at the hook of her bra.

Before he could slip it off, she pushed him away. "I want to see outside. Look how red the light is in here -- it's a romantic sunset, I know it."

"Oh, _all right_." Remus heaved a sigh and pushed himself upright, but not before kissing her again. "But I'm only taking your insults because this is about setting the proper mood."

He staggered to the window, and just as he flicked his wand to cast a charm to prevent anyone from seeing in with the curtains open, the bedsprings creaked and Tonks said in a coy tone that made him turn, "I'll make it worth your while..."

He'd probably got the spell all wrong, but he didn't care. She was sitting up on her knees, holding a dazzling fuchsia bra not very concealingly over her small, perfect porcelain breasts, straps falling down over her pale shoulders. Eyes locked on her, Remus mechanically opened the curtains, barely aware of the rings scraping against the rod as he watched her face, suddenly bathed in rosy light.

"Oh, Remus!" Her bra fell away as her arms went slack. "The sky!"

He glanced out the window and took in a brilliant sky. A swirl of a million pinks faded into one another like an abstract painting. Fairy-floss clouds glowed neon as though lit from within by Muggle lights. The sun, low and large and _ancient _in the sky, burned over the rooftops, licking them with ruddy flames, consuming itself and the old day, to rise anew tomorrow.

Beautiful as it was, Remus' gaze was drawn back to Tonks. The wonder on her youthful features, dancing in her eyes, made him smile.

"Very pink, isn't it?"

Tonks was too rapt on the sunset scene to respond to his teasing. "Have you ever seen anything more glorious?"

Grin widening to the point of hurting his cheeks, Remus strode the few paces back to the bed. Tonks held her hands out to him, turning her beautiful smile up to him as he reached up to her. Remus paused at the edge of the bed as he placed his palms in hers, letting the meaning of her slim fingers closing around his steal warmly through him.

Touching Tonks was like entering into a place where he was sure of welcome, and of being _wanted_. She was a hearth and a bed and an embrace at the end of the day.

She _was_ home.

"Does that look mean you think _I'm_ more glorious?" Tonks arched an eyebrow coyly -- and yet there was innocence in her gaze, as well.

"Yes."

Tonks squeezed his hands. "Then why didn't you say it?"

Remus chuckled, and peeked at her through his fringe. "Because I thought you'd laugh."

"'Course I will," Tonks said, and she did. She tugged his hands, indicating in no uncertain terms she wanted him to join her on the bed. "But I'll also be very flattered and ask you to make love to me."

Stretching out on his side next to her, Remus hooked one leg over her as his hand trailed up from the top of her lacy, deep magenta knickers. Nuzzling her ear, he said huskily, "You're the most glorious sight I've ever seen."

He pulled back to look at her.

Tonks' gaze burned into his as she whispered, "Make love to me, Remus?"

His desire up until that point had been indisputable. But to hear the words -- so sweetly innocent, and yet revealing her own longing..._for him_ -- made him want her even more.

The earlier thought he'd had about extending the moment for her seemed impossible as, the instant he touched his lips to hers, she set every fibre of his body ablaze. His veins seared with a wildfire he was utterly powerless to extinguish. Tonks, thankfully, gave no indication that she wanted him to; her hands stoked him on as she parted her legs, wrapping them around him, and pulled him over her.

They fell into a fast, erratic rhythm, which seemed to Remus to be ignited by the power of the fiercely burning setting sun. With every meeting of their skin, the encroaching flames licked more hotly at the self-destructive fear and doubt that had bound his heart and mind for the past year, burning them to ash. Remus embraced Tonks, covering her body more fully with his own; her fingers, splayed across his shoulders, seemed to melt into him, pulling him closer, deeper. His name crackled from her lips over and over, and Remus felt like a man refined, forged into a free, whole person, more like himself than he ever had been before.

_He had found himself in her. _

They cried out together -- Remus could have sworn that he heard distant phoenix song -- as the last glowing sliver of sun sank below the horizon. They collapsed into one another as the light in the room dimmed to the deeper twilight hues. As was becoming their habit, they lay together for a long time, his weight still resting on her, neither moving except to brush lips and fingers to damp faces -- Remus' were tangled in her hair -- not speaking except whispered utterances of love through shuddering breaths.

"You've no idea what it does for my dignity to see you like this," Remus whispered.

A spark of energy made him press his hips down into hers, stirring a soft moan from her throat. He burned again to know he was the only man who had seen her thus...or would...

"How're you seeing me?" Tonks asked breathlessly, through another pleasured sound, as he moved again.

_Flushed and radiant in the afterglow_, Remus thought, every inch of him warming against her. _More herself than he had seen her in an age. _

_Because she had found herself in him, as well. _

"Pink," Remus said. "You are quite pink all over, you know. Beautifully so, even if your hair--"

His words died as magic surged from her into him.

The hair he clutched between his fingers blazed, like the sky beyond the window...

...vividest pink.

"Nymphadora, you're--"

"--pink."

Her eyes fluttered closed, in ecstasy; at the corners, teardrops shimmered like jewels. Remus felt the prick in his own as her arms went around his neck, and she pulled his head down onto her shoulder.

Her damp cheek against his, she whispered, "I'm pink again."

Remus kissed the curve of her neck, then raised his head. Tonks' beautiful eyes opened, and he saw himself mirrored in their loving depths.

"I knew you'd make me pink again."

He opened his mouth to pick up her earlier joke about tickling her pink, but the teasing words lodged in his throat. He was too humbled by her trust, too overwhelmed by the feeling he'd never known of having lived up to such faith. He buried his face in her neck; her arms tightened around his back, pulling his weight firmly against her.

"Your heart's pounding," Tonks whispered.

"So is yours."

Remus' heart was pounding because he was seeing over and over her hair turning pink between his fingers. _He'd made her pink_. At the same moment, he saw just as clearly the instant it had gone brown -- the night he'd broken up with her. He had not realised at the time that it had been his doing, that she'd lost her powers right before his eyes. And when he _had _realised it, the thought that he could have that sort of power over another person, over _her_, terrified him, because it represented everything evil about what he was. He was a Dark Creature, and he had destroyed the woman he loved.

But he'd been wrong. He had not destroyed Nymphadora Tonks. He could not have done -- for the wolf was incapable of restoring what it destroyed, as Remus had done tonight.

It was still frightening to know that his heart contained such a force. Love was the greatest power he'd ever encountered -- as Dumbledore always said. Tonks had said herself, that his love had made it impossible for her to stop loving him; she'd never shut her heart to him, even though he'd broken it over and over -- and could do again.

Yet there was hope: he'd seen it spark tonight, and burst into flame; he'd felt the magic flare between his fingers, in vivid pink locks.

_Love did not destroy, and could restore -- again, and again._

Passion mounted anew as Remus considered all the ways they had restored each other over the past two days -- and how Tonks had restored him all along.

He kissed her fervently, moved by the realisation that though he had rejected her, Tonks' refusal to let go of him had held him out of the pit of total despair.

His lips softened against hers, opening and closing, pressing and releasing a little more intently and purposefully as he sought to give back the careful nurture she'd bestowed upon him. She'd guarded his shattered ego, protected his battered pride. He caressed her body, and told her how beautiful and wonderful she was to him.

He traced the contours of her face with ginger fingertips, whilst he lightly traced his tongue along the inside of her warm mouth. She had searched through fear and pain and shame, never giving up until she found what was truly him -- so he tasted her, explored her; reached out for the deepest part of her.

For her trust, he murmured promises into her lips.

For her courage, his mouth pressed firmly against hers.

He kissed her fiercely, for her loyalty, as his hands found the dimples in the small of her arched back, and pulled her tighter into him.

Resting his full weight on her slim form, tangling his fingers in her silky pink hair, he kissed her with abandon, for her hope.

She clung to him with lips and hands and lithe, strong limbs...met and matched him...returned what he gave...kindled the embers to life again, made them blaze up stronger, hotter than before.

Nothing had changed, and yet everything was different. Their troubles would never go away, and worse trials than they had yet encountered were sure to come. Inevitably searing flames would touch them, and their hearts would again endure pain. But in this moment with her, Remus' heart pounded with love -- that force he now knew burned far more fiercely, more enduring, than any struggle he had passed through or would pass through. They need not fear the fiery path to come, for at the end lay a golden future, and as they journeyed toward it, their love would cover them and bring relief, guard them from the full brunt of the heat. The flames would singe, but not consume; they would burn away all that came between them, would shape them closer, irrevocably, together.

As heated kiss met heated kiss, body joined with body, and soul connected with soul, their hearts passed though the fire and from the ashes, rose, transfigured.

_The End_

* * *

_**A/N: And that, my dearies, is the Transfigured Hearts series. **_

_**I can't express my appreciation enough for all the wonderful support and feedback y'all have given me over the past ten months. Thanks so very much for your warm welcome into the R/T community. Many, many thanks to my super beta, Godricgal, who helped me through the roughest patches in the R/T timeline, and went above and beyond the call of duty to help me make each piece the best it could be -- especially with this last one. Truly, it's been a joy to share my work with all of you, and I look forward to posting the fruits of my current plot bunnies -- which include sequels to this series. **_

_**This time, reviewers get their choice of Remus for a dinner date: practical Remus, who takes you to The Three Broomsticks because the food's safe; adventurous Remus, who takes you to the Hog's Head where you risk food poisoning but have entertainment from goats; boyish Remus, who takes you to Honeyduke's for Chocolate Frogs; or romantic Remus, who takes you back to your hotel room for a feast of the senses...**_


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